1. Victory in Niles Canyon - Caltrans backs off
2. Urbia is a great way to get kids excited about nature - Jan 28
3. Mountain Lake cleanup information session Jan 25
4. HANC nursery in GGP looking for interns
5. UC Botanical Garden hosting symposium on science and humanities perspectives on nature
6. Several volunteer opportunities on San Bruno Mtn in Jan/Feb
7. Pedro Point Headlands workday Sun the 29th
8. The people of my time are passing away: ageless lament from AR Ammons
9. The World's Largest Library Catalogue
10. Adrift in Wake of Kyoto, report back from Durban climate talks
11. SFPUC's Discounted Rain Barrel and Cistern Program
12. Green Hairstreak butterfly volunteer day Jan 28, 1 pm at Grandview Park
13. Correction on 8th Annual Bringing Back Natives Garden Tour
14. Solar energy: Flower Power - the birds and bees got there first/Fibonacci fun for kids
15. Vanishing Birds of the Philippines exhibit opens Feb 2 in Berkeley
16. LTEs: Demonology of finance, Marx Bros, et al
17. Charlie Chaplin on tragedy and comedy
18. Behind the lamb chops you buy
19. Donald Trump receives much-needed help from wife
0. A hearing in front of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to consider the joint appeal of the Planning Commission's certification of the America's Cup EIR will be held
TOMORROW, Jan 24, 2011 at 4 PM in City Hall, Room 250
Appellants are Keith Wagner, representing SF Tomorrow, GG Audubon, Waterfront Watch, and Telegraph Hill Dwellers, and Becky Evans, representing the local chapter of the Sierra Club.
Appellants are expected to argue that the document is inaccurate and incomplete because it lacks sufficient accountability measures for habitat protection, and contains an inadequate analysis of proposed dredging operations.
According to the Agenda, immediately following the hearing, there will be an up or down vote on the EIR certification
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1. CalTrans to Start Over On Environmental Review for Controversial Niles Road Widening Projects
Fremont, CA – The California Department of Transportation announced last week it will restart the environmental review and public comment process for phases one and two of the controversial $80 million highway widening project in Niles Canyon. CalTrans will propose a new phase one highway safety project in the lower canyon in fall of 2012, after it was forced to abandon the original project due to a lawsuit. CalTrans will also put aside the draft environmental impact report and restart the public comment and environmental review process for the phase two project in the middle of the canyon.
“We’ve chased CalTrans’ scorched earth policy out of the canyon for now,” said Jeff Miller, director of the Alameda Creek Alliance. “Whatever safety concerns Caltrans has - and we dispute the claimed safety benefits of the projects - can be addressed without road widening and adverse environmental impacts. We will work to ensure the revised projects do not involve filling Alameda Creek or cutting any more trees.”
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2. Join Urbia Adventure League and Bay Nature this Saturday January 28th for a special indoor-outdoor urban nature event hosted by the Randall Museum!
Drop in 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. to explore Corona Heights’ natural areas with the adventure booklet “Wayfinding on Rocky Mountain”. Check out the recent Bay Nature article about why URBIA is such a great way to get kids excited about nature.
URBIA and Bay Nature teams will be on hand with fun activities, too. Plus you can take part in Randall Museum programs on local geology and urban wildlife, see live native California animals, and even help plant native plants!
Since we have indoor and outdoor activities, this event will go ahead rain or shine. If you plan to take part in the native plant restoration, wear clothes that can get dirty and bring some garden gloves if you have them (though that's not mandatory).
RSVP appreciated to team@urbikids.com.
Location: Randall Museum, 199 Museum Way, San Francisco, CA
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3.
Community Information Session
Environmental Cleanup of Mountain Lake
Wednesday, January 25, 2012, 6:30p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Golden Gate Club, Presidio of San Francisco
135 Fisher Loop, San Francisco, California, 94129
The California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) and the Presidio Trust cordially invite you to a community information session on the environmental cleanup of Mountain Lake in the Presidio of San Francisco.
For directions to the Golden Gate Club, visit<http://www.presidio.gov/event/rental/goldengateclub/ggc.htm> or
From Arguello Gate:
Enter the Presidio at the Arguello Gate
Continue down Arguello Boulevard to the second stop sign; turn left on Moraga
Turn right on Infantry Terrace
Turn left on Fisher Loop to arrive at the Golden Gate Club
Additional information is available at Friends of Mountain Lake Park<http://www.fmlp.org> website or the Richmond SF Blog<http://richmondsfblog.com/2012/01/18/public-meeting-about-environmental-cleanup-of-mountain-lake-january-25/>
Dan Murphy comment:
Apparently there are some pretty significant potential impacts due to night lighting and the nature of the process of removing tons of sludge from the lake. I think they're planning to bring it from about an 8' depth to over 20'. Sounds like a good idea to me, but the process does need some consideration.
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4. The HANC Native Plant Nursery in Golden Gate Park is looking for interns who are interested in learning about propagating and selling San Francisco native plants, maintaining an acre of native plant gardens in Golden Gate Park and composting.
Interns will have the opportunity to take plants for their personal gardens.
Email Greg at dunetansy@yahoo.com
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5. Jake:
On February 10th The University of California Botanical Garden is hosting a symposium on science and humanities perspectives on nature, which may be of interest to folks on your list. The URL is http://naturaldiscourse.org/events.html
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6. San Bruno Mountain Watch - become a Volunteer today!
We have volunteer opportunities for everyone from students to grandparents.
Our wetlands restoration group meets every Tuesday from 10:30am-12:30pm at the end of Cypress Lane.
Mission Blue Nursery volunteers meet every Wednesday from 10am to 12pm.
We also have two grassland restoration groups. The Weed Rangers meet every Saturday from 10am to 12:30. The Weed Warriors meet on the last Friday and Saturday each month, from 9am to noon.
For more information about our volunteer activities, please visit our website. Please take a moment to click on the link below and sign up for volunteer opportunities.
Join the South San Francisco Weed Warriors on San Bruno Mountain
Friday January 27th and
Saturday January 28th
9am to 12pm
Come out Friday or Saturday - or both days! - and help with this critical stewardship work. The recent rains will allow us to do some plantings on Friday - plus make weeding so much easier.
• gloves provided
• wear long pants and layers
• wear sturdy shoes
• bring water!
Check out the San Bruno Mountain Watch website for all volunteer opportunities in our Stewardship Programs and Upcoming Events
San Bruno Mountain Watch
(415) 467-6631
Or email leaders
Chuck and Loretta
Meeting location: behind the Mills Montessori School at 1400 Hillside Blvd in South San Francisco
View Google Map
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7. Hooray! It's Time for Planting!!! If the rain comes like expected we can plant on Sunday, January 29th and our plants are ready to set down some roots!!!
Pedro Point Headlands Workday RSVP so Appreciated!
Sunday, January 29th
9.45am – 1pm
Meet at the Pedro Point Firehouse (Danmann Road)
Please wear old boots/shoes, clothes, long sleeve shirt and long pants. Dress for warm or cold. It will be a good day to get your hands dirty and rub elbows with a fun bunch of volunteers and to nurture your green thumb!
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8.
After the Fact
The people of my time are passing away: my
Wife is baking for a funeral, a 60-year old who
Died suddenly, when the phone rings, and it’s
Ruth we care so much about in intensive care:
It was once weddings that came so thick and
Fast, and then, first babies, such a hullabaloo:
Now, it’s this and that and the other and somebody
Else gone or on the brink: well, we never
Thought we would live forever (although we did)
And now it looks like we won’t: some of us
Are losing a leg to diabetes, some don’t know
What they went downstairs for, some know that
A hired watchful person is around, some like
To touch the cane tip into something steady,
So nice: we have already lost so many,
Brushed the loss of ourselves ourselves: our
Address books for so long a slow scramble now
Are palimpsests, scribbles and scratches: our
Index cards for Christmases, birthdays,
Halloweens drop clean away into sympathies:
At the same time we are getting used to so
Many leaving, we are hanging on with a grip
To the ones left: we are not giving up on the
Congestive heart failures or brain tumors, on
The nice old men left in empty houses or on
The widows who decided to travel a lot: we
Think the sun may shine someday when we’ll
Drink wine together and think of what used to
Be: until we die we will remember every
Single thing, recall every word, love every
Loss: then we will, as we must, leave it to
Others to love, love that can grow brighter
And deeper till the very end, gaining strength
And getting more precious all the way….
~ A. R. Ammons ~
(Epoch)
palimpsest |ˈpalimpˌsest|
noun
a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain.
• figurative something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form : Sutton Place is a palimpsest of the taste of successive owners.
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9.
WorldCat.org - The World's Largest Library Catalogue - http://www.worldcat.org/
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10. Adrift in the Wake of Kyoto
A report-back from the Durban climate talks with Andy Katz
Thursday, January 26, 2012, 7pm - 9pm
The science is clear, but there is a serious disconnect with the pace world negotiations are taking to secure a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for the impacts posed by climate change.
Join Andy Katz, Sierra Club delegate to the recent UN climate negotiations in Durban and EBMUD Director, for a report-back and conversation about the state of the negotiations. Come hear about the importance of our state and local work for climate protection and where local clean energy jobs efforts fit in.
Following a talk and Q&A, we’ll engage in discussion about state and regional climate issues and how we can be effective locally in the face of international inertia.
Location: 2530 San Pablo Avenue (near Dwight Way), Berkeley, CA 94702
Cost: Free
Info: 510-548-2220 x233, debra@ecologycenter.org. Wheelchair Accessible
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11. From SFPUC
Did you know that neighborhoods in Ancient Rome were designed with individual cisterns which captured rainwater from paved courtyards?
Think of all the rainwater these communities could have stored utilizing the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission's Discounted Rain Barrel and Cistern Program!
Perhaps our program is late for the Ancient Romans, but YOU can get discounts of 30-60% off 60-gallon rain barrels and up to $640 off cisterns! Visit sfwater.org/rainwater for more information or call 415-554-0715.
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12.
Green Hairstreak Workday
Saturday January 28th (4TH SATURDAY)
Grandview Park @ 1pm - 3pm
January we are ringing in the New Year with a special collaboration workday with SF Rec & Park at Grandview Park on the 4th Saturday of the month instead of the 3rd. We invite you all to come help restore habitat at Grandview, a park with one of the most beautiful views of San Francisco and an important biological feature for the Green Hairstreaks and other local wildlife. Come join ecological experts and devoted volunteers in preserving this beloved natural area!
Official Green Hairstreak Sign for Outdoor Classroom
Herbert Hoover Middle School continues to grow with Green Hairstreak excitement! Kids in Parks and Nature in the City's Liam O'Brien have come together to produce this beautiful and educational sign to mark Hoover's growing outdoor classroom at the bottom of Hawk Hill. Just last week "HHMS" had an assembly dedicated to the Green Hairstreak, at which Liam presented a slideshow to 6th, 7th, and 8th graders about the life cycle of the butterfly.
"The principal, Tomas, is voracious in his pursuit of connecting his kids to the beauty of Hawk Hill. No 'nature deficit' going on over there." - O'Brien
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Save the Date!
The Green Hairstreak Corridor
Liam O'Brien and The Hidden Garden Steps
Thursday April 12th, 7:30 pm
@ Randall Museum
hosted by SF Naturalist Society
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13. Correction/Addition:
a. Eighth Annual Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour:
The dates for the Native Plant Sale Extravaganza were last year's. The correct dates are Sat. and Sun.. May 5 and 6.
Here's correct posting:
Registration for the Eighth Annual Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour, which will take place on Sunday, May 6, 2012 from 10 to 5, is now open. This free, award-winning tour features 45 Alameda and Contra Costa county gardens that are pesticide-free, conserve water, provide habitat for wildlife, and contain 60% or more native plants. This self-drive tour showcases a variety of gardens, from large parcels in the hills to small lots in the flats. Native plant sales and talks are offered at select gardens. Space is limited and registration is required. This tour will fill; register early to ensure a place. Volunteers are needed. Please register or volunteer at http://www.bringingbackthenatives.net/
A companion event, the Native Plant Sale Extravaganza, will take place throughout the weekend of May 5 and May 6.
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b. Rebecca Evans, regarding Kathleen Wong's book
I write because I thought you and your readers might be interested in a book of mine that was just published in October by the University of California Press. It's called Natural History of San Francisco Bay, and it's part of the press's venerable California Natural History Guides series.
Jake - Ms. Wong's co-author is Ariel Rubissow Okamoto; Ariel will be the speaker at the May 17 SF Natural History Series program.
And she's also the author in an excellent article in the January-March 2012 Bay Nature on implications of rising sea levels in the Bay. It would be good for all of us to be thinking about this, as it is happening.
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14. Solar energy
Flower power
In matters of clever design, nature has often got there first
Jan 21st 2012 | from The Economist print edition
A virtuous spiral
SOLAR-POWER stations take up a lot of room. They need either vast arrays of photovoltaic panels, which convert sunlight directly into electricity, or of mirrors, which direct it towards a boiler, in order to raise steam and drive a generator. The space these arrays occupy could often be used for other purposes.
Two researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have now devised a better and more compact way of laying out arrays of mirrors. Slightly to their chagrin, however, and somehow appropriately, they found when they had done the calculations that sunflowers had got there first.
Alexander Mitsos and Corey Noone started with the observation that existing concentrated solar-power plants, as those which drive boilers are known, usually have their mirrors arranged in a way that resembles the seating in a cinema. The mirrors are placed in concentric semicircles facing a tower, on top of which the boiler and the turbine sit. That arrangement, however, sometimes results in the mirrors shading each other as the sun’s position in the sky changes, even though the mirrors are usually attached to robotic arms that track the sun as it moves.
According to their report in Solar Energy, Dr Mitsos and Mr Noone found that they could do better. They divided each of the mirrors in a real power plant, PS10, in southern Spain into about 100 pieces. (Or, rather, they divided a computer representation of each mirror.) They then plugged each of those pieces into a computer model that calculated all of the energy losses by noting points where mirrors were not optimally oriented to the sun and places where they hindered one another by blocking incoming or reflected rays. It then rejigged them into a better arrangement.
Fermat’s conjecture
Previous efforts have been directed mainly at stopping the mirrors shading each other, which tends to mean spreading them out. Dr Mitsos and Mr Noone also wanted to save space. In trying to do so they stumbled on an unusual arrangement that had the desired effect. When they showed this layout to a third researcher, Manuel Torrilhon of Aachen University in Germany, he recognised the spiral patterns within it, and this prompted the trio to test a design specifically modelled on nature.
That design was a pattern known as a Fermat spiral, in which each element is set at a constant angle of 137° to the previous one. It is most familiar as the arrangement of the florets that make up a sunflower head. When the three researchers programmed their model to arrange PS10’s mirrors in front of the tower in a segment from such a spiral, they both improved the efficiency of the collection process and saved space. The improvement in efficiency was, admittedly, quite small (about half a percent), but the space saving was significant—almost 16%.
If solar power is to make up much of the world’s electricity output in future, as supporters of alternative energy hope it will, a lot of land will be needed for the power stations. Reducing that requirement by a sixth, as this discovery promises, would be a big gain. It would also show that if you look hard enough, there really is nothing new under the sun.
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(Very apropos is this book. It is good for kids and adults; the Fibonacci numbers, as exemplified in this sunflower, is a source of fascination and deep and continuing interest. JS)
Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature, by Sarah C. Campbell
Kids can learn about this special set of numbers from color nature photos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_Anax0axLY
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15.
The Bone Room Presents and Jeepney Projects are pleased to present artist and birding enthusiast David Tomb's installation
“Jeepney Projects Worldwide: Vanishing Birds of the Philippines”.
Opening Reception: Thursday, Feb. 2, 7 – 9pm
(click here for directions).
Tomb will host a special Artist Talk on Thursday, February 23 at 7pm.
This exhibition will feature works on paper of the iconic and critically endangered Great Philippine Eagle and the other beautiful endemic birds of the Philippines, including the Rufous Hornbill. There will be living plants and an audio installation that will highlight sounds of the Mindanao jungle. The show shines a light on the rare and beautiful Philippine birds, and the challenges and tension these creatures face in order to survive and share a sustainable future with an ever growing Filipino population.
In partnership with the Philippine Eagle Foundation, Jeepney Projects has created limited fine-art benefit prints to raise money for research, public outreach and education about the Eagle.
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16. LTEs, The Economist
SIR – Schumpeter missed the point about the “demonology” of finance (January 7th). The money is ours; it belongs to the taxpayer. The banking industry has been socialised by the Republicans, of all people. Schumpeter cited Karl Marx. He should have referred to the Marx Brothers.
Imagine that each brother runs a bank and invests in bonds. To cover themselves they buy default insurance. Groucho knows he is covered as he bought insurance from Chico, who’s done the same from Harpo, and Harpo being no fool has got cover from Groucho. At the end of the movie they all need a shave and are begging on the street.
Fred Elliott
Milford, Massachusetts
Delicately expressed
SIR – Your article on euphemisms (“Making murder respectable”, December 17th) brought to mind the following crime report:
She was decapitated and disembowelled. She was however not interfered with.
Russell Denoon Duncan
Thames Ditton, Surrey
* SIR – It was interesting to see London’s rich bankers referred to as “high net-worth individuals” just three weeks after your feature on euphemisms. If teamed with the popularity among American politicians of “job creators” as the new term for rich businessmen whose tax privileges are under question, you could whitewash a good deal of government-backed enterprise as “capitalism”, if Occupy protesters hadn’t already done so.
Clifford Zeyl
Pfafftown, North Carolina
SIR – Football managers are no longer sacked. They “part company” with their club, for business reasons or to spend more time with their family. When one manager was found to be “seeing” the same blonde as his chairman, he was told his contract would not be renewed as he had “taken the club as far as he could”.
Mike Pavasovic
Ashton-under-Lyne
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17. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot. -Charlie Chaplin
(This is a variant of "Life is a comedy for those who think, but a tragedy to those who feel.")
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18. There's a lot behind those lamb chops you buy at the store
Cowboys might have castrated lambs with their teeth back in the Old West days, but this is not a good idea now, says the Center for Disease Control, in case you were wondering. As well as being messy, bloody and unpleasant for all concerned, especially the animal, using your teeth to bite off animal testicles can lead to campylobacteriosis, a disease that causes diarrhea, cramps, fever, nausea, and vomiting. The subject came up because last June, two men who were working on a ranch castrating lambs decided to do it the old-fashioned way. Both cowboys got sick, and one man ended up in the hospital, reports the CDC in a dispassionate bulletin to Wyoming officials describing its extensive medical investigation. High Country News 26.12.11
(JS: The reporter, doubtless unfamiliar with this process, left out a detail: the tip of the lamb's scrotum is cut off by knife and the teeth are used to extract the testicles. If done carefully, there should be no contact with the exterior of the scrotum, thus no bacteria.
If you're wondering, I was raised on a Montana sheep ranch and was a yearly participant in this unpleasant process. I held the lambs legs while the tails were cut off then cauterized, and the males castrated. [The operation was done free by a guy who did it for the testicles, known colloquially as Rocky Mountain oysters.])
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19.
"You wouldn't think Donald Trump would need much connubial coaxing to picture himself in the Trump White House. But a Globe headline this week reads: 'Wife Melania Tells The Donald: America Needs You!'"
Maureen Dowd, She Made Me Run!; The New York Times; Dec 31, 2011.
Aw, come on, Donald, Run. We know you're shy and modest, so we urge you...
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