Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Special to Bayview Hill-Jake Sigg's Nature News

1.   Central Subway funds are now needed to save the SF Muni system
2.   Sustainable Landscaping With Native Plants, TONIGHT in Millbrae
3.   The imaginative possibilities of a new integration of urban and rural through local agriculture, &c.  Tonight at CounterPULSE
4.   CNPS plant sale in Los Altos Hills, Saturday 1 May
5.   After the volcano - some reflections
6.   And some more reflections on man
7.   Reflections on crows, those clever devils
8.   And in this corner, the heavyweight champion of the world:  the dung beetle!
9.   Sign the petition against climate catastrophe
10. Celebrating the Bees, May 8:  bee walks, talks, demos, honey tasting in Mill Valley
11.  Vote for McLaren Park to receive $30k competition
12.  Feedback
13.  Building a more effective environmental movement/colossus of dams Floyd Dominy dies, 100 years too late
14.  More evidence that refined carbs, not fats, threaten the heart/brain surges with activity just before death
15.  Salute to acid-tongued conductor Sir Thomas Beecham on his birthday
16.  Wilma Mankiller, first woman chief of the Cherokee Nation, dies


1.  CENTRAL SUBWAY FUNDS ARE NOW NEEDED TO SAVE THE MUNI SYSTEM
 
 
Existing funds are available to save Muni NOW.
The Central Subway Project has $384 million in existing State and Local funds. 
Demand that City Officials and MTA Management reallocate these funds to the Muni system.
Moreover, the MTA is “turning over every rock” for an additional $164 million in Local funds and $88 million in State funds. 
Demand that these new funds, if found, be used for the Muni system.
 
Muni can choose to have ten years of budget surpluses while fixing the existing system.
Like the reallocation of funds from the equally bad Oakland Airport Connector and Alaska’s “Bridge to No Where”, existing monies can solve more immediate needs.  The Central Subway’s $636 million in State/ Local funds and $942 million in future Federal funds could revolutionize Muni.  In times of economic crisis, priorities must be reevaluated.

The Federal Transit Administrator (FTA) deems the Central Subway a high risk project.
In its letter to the SFMTA, January 7, 2010, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) requires that local funding cover all project cost increases---identifying financing options, funding sources, short-term lines of credit, debt, debt capacity, revenue sources….and notes that:
“The Central Subway Project is a high risk project located in a densely populated urban center.  It is the largest, most complex project ever undertaken by SFMTA.”

Before approving federal funds, the FTA is demanding that the MTA secure $164 million more in local funding and $88 million in state funding.  Meanwhile, Muni teeters on a multiyear death spiral of deficits.

Furthermore, the FTA explicitly requires proof that any Central Subway operating costs will not diminish the existing Muni System!  But even the T-Line increased operating and maintenance costs, cutting back surface bus service and lacking funds to operate the new Metro East Maintenance Facility.

Tragically, the Central Subway’s own EIR projects large reductions in surface buses to offset higher operating costs.
Tens of thousands of riders, north of the Washington Street Subway Station, will have reduced service.  Few riders will benefit from the one-half mile subway ride from Washington Street to Union Square.  Far worse, from Stockton & Pacific Ave., the Total Travel Time by Bus to Market St. is faster than the Total Travel Time by Subway.  
 
·  In the Central Subway Final SEIS/SEIR, Volume II, Page 3-187:
“The operational analysis and cost estimates that were conducted for the Central Subway financial feasibility take into account cost savings associated with the reduction in frequency of service on the surface lines operating in the Central Subway Corridor.”
 
·  In the Central Subway Final SEIS/SEIR, Executive Summary, Table S-2, page S-12:
Table S-2 shows the Subway Alternative as including 76,400 hours fewer bus hours a year than the TSM/No Project Alternative.
Contained within Table S-2 for “Annual Operating Statistics”, "Total Annual Diesel/Trolley Bus Hours (System wide): subtracting (2,622,030 – 2,545,630) = 76,400 hours of reduced Annual Diesel/ Trolley Bus Hours.
 
Like a living organism, the rerouting of major blood vessels/ circulation away from major organs is nonsensical---as is the elimination of public transit to major urban nodes. 
South of Market Street, the rerouted T-Line will eliminate direct service to the Embarcadero Station (Ferry Building and ferry services), Montgomery Station (financial district, TransBay Terminal and future High Speed Rail), Powell Station, Civic Center Station and the entire Market Street Corridor---for perpetuity.  From northerly Washington Street, the proposed subway goes to a new Union Square Station---requiring that riders walk up 8 stories and 1,000 feet to the existing Powell Station.
The Central Subway decreases connectivity to BART, Muni Metro, Ferry, High Speed Rail, crossing bus lines and major employment/ commercial centers.

SaveMuni.com would be pleased to present additional information.

Regards, Howard Wong, AIA
SaveMuni.com

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2.
Topic:   Sustainable Landscaping With Native Plants
Speaker: Peigi Duvall, Landscape Designer
Date:    Wed, April 28, 7pm
Venue:   Millbrae Library, 1 Library Ave, Millbrae

Does your garden consume more resources than it produces? How can you design a garden to reduce its consumption of water, energy, chemicals, and labor, and yet provide habitat, beauty, and years of enjoyment?  Landscape designer Peigi Duvall has years of experience designing sustainable native plant gardens.

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3.
Shaping San Francisco talks at CounterPULSE
Ecology Emerges
Nature in Cities
April 28 - 7:30 pm

Join Peter Berg, Miya Yoshitani, and Jason Mark for a panel discussion about the imaginative possibilities of a new integration of urban and rural through local agriculture, human-powered transport, etc. Nature in the City's Peter Brastow & Iris Clearwater will be there to join in the discussion about biodiversity in the city  Located at CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission St.

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4.  In this age of global warming and climate change, what can you do to help the environment? Go native! By planting native plants in the garden, you conserve water and energy, eliminate the use of synthetic chemicals, and create a garden attractive to humans as well as birds and butterflies. Discover the possibilities at the CNPS Santa Clara Valley Chapter Native Plant Sale at Hidden Villa Ranch in Los Altos Hills on Saturday, May 1, 2010, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

California native plants are naturally adapted to the local soil and climate changes, thrive without amendments, fertilizers, or pesticides, and offer incomparable habitat value. Spring is the time of riotous color from native wildflowers, many of which are easy to grow in home gardens.

The sale takes place Saturday, May 1, 2010, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the Hidden Villa Ranch, 26870 Moody Road, Los Altos Hills. The ranch is 2 miles west of the I-280 Moody/El Monte Road exit. Parking is free. Come early for the best selection; bring boxes in which to carry purchases home. Cash or check only; no credit cards. For more information: www.cnps-scv.org, cnps_scv@yahoo.com, 650-260-3450.

Free Talk & Tour: Success With Native Plants for Beginners
Spring planting can sometimes be tricky for native plants. Come to this talk by Kevin Bryant to learn the right way to plant and care for young native plants. Find out which plants need summer water, which tolerate it, and which absolutely resent it. The talk will be followed by a short tour of the native garden around the Visitor Center.

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5.
After the volcano
Earthly powers
Apr 22nd 2010 | From The Economist print edition (excerpt)

With great power comes great responsibility

...But the week of absences also offers a less obvious lesson.  One of the things that went missing in the shadow of that volcanic dust was a sense of human power.  And as with the quiet skies, this absence found a welcome in many hearts.  The idea that humans, for all their technological might, could be put in their place by this volcano—this obscure, unpronounceable, C-list volcano—was strangely satisfying, even thrilling.
Such pleasure in the face of overpowering nature, as seen from a place of safety, was at the heart of the idea of “the sublime” as expressed by the great conservative Edmund Burke 250 years ago, and its aesthetic and spiritual allure remains strong. The sublime offers solace and inspiration...
________________________
From Guardian Weekly 23.04.10 (excerpt)  
...Iceland’s revenge on the world economy has given us a glimpse of a world without air travel.  As many people observed over the last week, the sight of clear blue skies was strangely uplifting.
George Monbiot wrote:  “Over the past few days people living under the flight paths have seen the future, and they like it.  The state of global oil supplies, the industry’s social and environmental costs and its extreme vulnerability mean that current levels of flying – let alone the growth the government anticipates – cannot be maintained indefinitely.  We have a choice.  We can start decommissioning this industry while there is time and find ways of living happily with less of it.  Or we can sit and wait for physical reality to simplify the system by more brutal means.” ______________________
(Simon Hoggart, writing about the English election.)  “Gassy material being ejected high into the atmosphere – and it could go on for days!”, said an expert.  It turned out to be the volcano.  
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6.  "For the animal shall not be measured by the man.  In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and more complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear."  Henry Beston
"Every animal knows more than you do. "Native American Proverb (Nez Perce) 
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7.
Crows:  More fun stuff about these fun birds; the news articles give the background, but the video tells it better:



Excerpt from the Guardian piece:  In praise of… the New Caledonian crow

In 2002 a New Caledonian crow seized a piece of wire and swiftly bent it into a hook to yank a tasty titbit from a glass cylinder

The American preacher Henry Ward Beecher said that if men "bore black feathers, few would be clever enough to be crows". Certainly, in a parliament of fowls, they would rule any roost.

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8.  The champion dung beetle

Dung beetles, right, it's fair to say, have always punched above their weight.  Their dung-rolling led the ancient Egyptians to believe they were responsible for keeping the sun moving.  Now scientists are also singing their praises after discovering they are strongest insects in the world.

Plucky male Onthophagus taurus can pull 1,141 times their own body weight:  the equivalent of an average person pulling six double-decker buses full of people.  The news might take the shine off the title of World's Strongest Man for Lithuanian Zydrunas Savickas; last year he pulled a 70-tonne plane for 30m in under 75 seconds - this works out as only 411 times his 170kg body weight.  Guardian Weekly 23.04.10

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9.  The Center for Biological Diversity and 350.org took an historic step in the desperate fight against climate catastrophe when we legally petitioned the EPA to establish a national pollution cap for greenhouse gas pollution under the Clean Air Act.  But, now we need your help to get 500,000 people to sign the 'People's Petition'.

With Copenhagen failing to produce a legally binding, science based agreement and the Senate moving slowly and weakly, pushing the EPA right now takes on particular importance. Time is short.

Here are some ideas of how you can help:
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10.  Savory Thymes invites you and your family to join us in

 Celebrating the Bees - A Community Gathering to Benefit the Survivor Stock Queen Bee Project
Saturday, May 8, 2010, 1:00 - 4:00 pm at Hillside Gardens in Mill Valley

The afternoon will include:
Native bee walks led by Dr. Gordon Frankie of the Urban Bee Lab, U.C. Berkeley
Honey bee talk by Mea McNeil, Master Beekeeper
Demonstration and learning stations presented by the Marin Beekeepers Association
Honey tasting featuring local varieties of honey
Live Celtic music
May Pole ceremony
Savory and Sweet afternoon hors d'oeuvres and drink will be served.

This is a kid-friendly event so please bring your children.
Tickets are $25 per person (kids are free).  We encourage you to dress comfortably and casually.

RSVP to ali ghiorse at ali@savorythymesevents.org (reservations for kids are required).  To purchase tickets please click here

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11.  Sears is sponsoring a nationwide online contest for a $30,000 Park Makeover!  San Francisco's own McLaren Park was nominated and was recently selected as one of the 10 finalists!  To win $30,000 to help make over this beloved park, we need to have the most votes!  Log on to www.moregreenacrossamerica.com  to vote by May 5. 

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12.  Feedback
Carol Teltschick-Fall:
Dear Jake, Now you understand the angry email I sent you a few years ago, raging about Big Ag, links between food and disease, and way our tax dollars are spent subsidizing the very companies that are killing us.Thank goodness people are making films like this, and writing books like Fast Food Nation and In Defense of Food.

However, one topic not yet broached is the poorly understood relationship between our food industry and cancer. Cancer is the number 2 killer in America, vying for number one, yet we seem to be in a state of national denial about the disease. Perhaps that's because cancer is one of the scariest and hardest diseases to face, but maybe it's also because we have been falsely led to believe that we can "avoid cancer by making healthy life-style choices." Well, you can make some choices but not as many as we like to think, and we stand largely uninformed about the degree to which our food, water and air --- the basics of life -- have been, and are still being, corrupted for profit. There is a reason why America has the highest rates of cancer and cancer deaths in the world. But how many Americans even realize that we do?

More films and books are coming about this so stay tuned.
Peter Rauch:
60-SECOND EARTH: What's the Most Recycled Product in the U.S.?
It's not paper, plastic or even aluminum. David Biello reports

"Car batteries" ?  Nah --it's water, 100%.
Peter:  Are you referring to natural recycling?  It sounds like it.  I don't think that's what S.A. had in mind.
It occurred to me that most "products" which are only partially recycled leave the remainder of those products (the unrecycled portion) in a state of longterm (in terms of human time scales) unavailability and/or allow those materials to actually create toxic wastes.  Water, on the other hand, seems to all get back into the cyclical sky to land/sea state, ready for re-use.

So, what I had in mind wasn't so much "natural" --after all, given enough time, more than humanity has on Earth, everything recycles naturally-- as was the question of what happens to the portion of the used product which is not "unnaturally" recycled but simply spewed back into the environment. I think water --as a human waste  product-- wins the recycling contest.
Carol Strauss:
Jake, Re: Mark Twain
Even though Samuel Clemens was born prematurely (dangerous in those times), his mother was sure he'd survive because of the appearance of Halley's comet around the time of his birth [something I read recently but can't name the source, sorry]. Even more fascinating is that he correctly foresaw his death at the comet's return:

In 1909, Twain is quoted as saying:
I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'
His prediction was accurate – Twain died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910, in Redding, Connecticut one day after the comet's closest approach to Earth.
From Wikipedia.

Nobody explains when, why, and for how long he wore white suits . . .,

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13.  From High Country News

In The Rebirth of Environmentalism, activist Douglas Bevington explores the relationship between the giant national organizations, like the Sierra Club, and the small grassroots groups. 
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"Glen Canyon Dam and the creation of the most wonderful lake in the world, Lake Powell, is my crowning jewel."

That's Floyd Dominy, commissioner for the Bureau of Reclamation from 1959 to 1969, speaking during an interview a decade ago. He died at the age of 100, on April 20. Some had hoped the dam would go first, draining Lake Powell and restoring the river's ecosystem.

One week before Dominy passed away, I spoke to him by telephone. I wanted to talk to the man I'd learned about long ago from reading John McPhee's Encounters with the Archdruid. I can think of no better way to write a story than the way McPhee did: You put two enemies in a rubber raft (along with a handful of unsuspecting strangers) and send them all down the wild Colorado river together.

That’s what McPhee did with Dominy and David Brower, the Sierra Club executive director who considered the construction of Glen Canyon Dam his biggest environmental policy failure. It seemed, though, that Dominy and Brower had a blast, drinking beer and occasionally bickering about whether remote stretches of the Colorado were valuable because they were untouched, or wasted because they weren't being developed. I've never forgotten McPhee's description of Dominy, endlessly smoking cigars on the raft trip and somehow able to keep one lit as the raft passed through a waterfall.

When I spoke to Dominy, I said I thought the trip sounded pretty exciting. "It was boring!" he said. "Boring, how could it be anything else? You can't see out from the bottom of a canyon."

(You sure can't, Floyd.  Not if you're blind.)  

"An age is called dark, not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it."  James Michener


"The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper."  Eden Phillpotts

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14.  Scientific American

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MAGAZINE: Carbs against Cardio: More Evidence that Refined Carbohydrates, not Fats, Threaten the Heart
Whether the new thinking will be reflected in this year's revision of the federal dietary guidelines remains unclear

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND: Going Out with a Bang
The brain surges with activity just before death

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15.  Conductor Sir Thomas Beecham 29 April 1879
“Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands - and all you can do is scratch it”
“Brass bands are all very well in their place - outdoors and several miles away.”
“There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.”
“If an opera cannot be played by an organ grinder, it's not going to achieve immortality.”
“Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle.”
It is quite untrue that British people don't appreciate music. They may not understand it but they absolutely love the noise it makes.”

Beecham was famous for his quick wit and acid tongue.  He was rehearsing The Marriage of Figaro in the late 1930s, but the Countess, the famed Tiana Lemnitz, was very late for the rehearsal.  She eventually showed up, strode onto the stage and, giving the salute, said "Heil Hitler!"  Everyone was stunned.  Beecham stared long and hard at her, then without saying a word raised the baton to start the rehearsal.  It was reputed to be the only time in his life that he was at a loss for words.

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16.  Wilma Mankiller, first woman chief of the Cherokee Nation, died on April 6th, aged 64
Apr 22nd 2010 | From The Economist print edition
ALL through her life, white people tried to help Wilma Mankiller. As she walked to school, two miles down the hilly, narrow lanes of north-eastern Oklahoma, women in big cars would stop and offer her a ride. She didn’t want one. The same women would appear sometimes at the wood-frame house, where her family of 11 lived in three rooms, burning coal-oil and hauling water from the spring, and offer them second-hand clothes. She would run away. If they caught her, they would pat her on her black-haired, Indian head. “Bless your little heart,” they murmured.
In 1956, when she was ten, white people suggested her family should move from their farm at Mankiller Flats to San Francisco. The government, having forced her ancestors in 1838 along the Trail of Tears from eastern Tennessee to Indian Territory, now promised them a better life even farther west. They caught the passenger train from Stilwell; she wept Cherokee tears all the way to California. No one had forced them out this time. But they ended up in a drab, violent housing project where her father found back-breaking work in a rope-factory and she was mocked at school for her stupid name. She knew it meant “guardian of the settlement”; but that all seemed far away and irrelevant now.
Many years later, when she was principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, a white woman offered money for college scholarships for Indians. She said she wanted to “give pride back” to them. Ms Mankiller had never heard such arrogance. Yes, her tribe needed schools, clinics, day care, Head Start programmes, and all these she was busy procuring for them. But it did not need the patronising charity of white people. Under Ms Mankiller, the Cherokee were learning to rely on themselves again.
It had taken time. Over the years the tribe had been absorbed until almost everything was lost. In 1907 the tribal lands in Oklahoma had been broken up into allotments, one of which was given to Ms Mankiller’s grandfather at Mankiller Flats; and nothing did more damage to the tribe, she believed, than that loss of commonalty and spiritual, as well as physical, interdependence. Her family had tried to preserve it, bartering with and working for other people. But the Cherokee could not easily find their sense of oneness again.
She herself was almost lost to the tribe for a while, married to a Latino at 17, having two daughters early, living a middle-class Californian life. But the San Francisco of the late 1960s gradually radicalised her. The stiletto heels were swapped for sandals; the husband was sidelined; the two small daughters were taken by boat to be part of the Native-American reclamation of the prison-island of Alcatraz; and in 1976 she went back with them in a U-Haul van to Mankiller Flats. There, on the land that was still her family’s, they camped under the stars and learned to tell the time by the sun, Cherokee-fashion. Nine years later she was chief of the Cherokee Nation.
Hard graft was required. When she first ran for office in 1983, the entire tribal council opposed her: not because she was an activist, but because she was a woman. No woman had led such a large tribe before. She slogged on, “keeping steady”, until she had won them over. Organising in California for other tribes had taught her how to type, draw up grant applications and analyse land treaties; she brought in revenue and social programmes. But firstly she taught self-reliance. She had never forgotten the women at the Indian Centre in San Francisco, poor single mothers who made themselves ballgowns from cast-offs and went out to dance on Saturday nights, their hair piled up under Aqua Net lacquer, determined to unite and shine.
She was credited with many things, including the expansion of the tribe from 55,000 to almost 200,000 members, its control of a $75m budget, the revival of the Sequoyah high school and the broadening of horizons for all Indian women. But her own favourite project was one she had masterminded in 1981 in the village of Bell, 14 miles from Mankiller Flats. There she persuaded a dying Cherokee settlement of 300 people, mostly chicken-catchers in run-down shacks, to build their own 16-mile water-line to the mains supply. If they dug or drilled, they would get new houses. The people took a year of persuading; but they built the line. No white person helped them. The “shiftless” Cherokees proudly did everything necessary.

The healing spring

Ms Mankiller was not an easy taskmaster. She scolded the people of Bell until they obeyed her. When the tribal council cavilled about her disregard for ceremony, she turned off their microphones. Because the owners of smokeshops refused to pay their taxes, she shut them down. She battled on through constant illnesses, ending with pancreatic cancer, but still considered her biggest challenge was to restore the Cherokees’ lost faith in themselves.
One cure she knew. At Mankiller Flats, where she went back to live, the old wooden house had been burned down by hunters, but the spring still flowed. A Cherokee ritual called “going to the water” could heal negative thoughts as poultices healed wounds. So there, among the rocky slopes of bending hickory and walnut trees, her feet slightly wary of crawfish in the icy water, she would gather positive strength for herself, as well as for her tribe. 

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