2. SF Planning & Board pushing near-record large developments/fund-raiser June 21
3. Help LEJ Nursery recover from vandalism
4. Save The Frogs from Atrazine
5. In Search of Eradicated San Francisco Landscapes June 21
6. Has the moon been up there All these nights And I never noticed?
7. Special trip to Eastern Sierra to benefit EBRPD Botanic Garden Aug 6-10
8. Nature lacks voice to speak for itself - but isn't interested in one
9. Why bulls and bears on Wall Street?
10. Last chance for Green Connections Survey
11. Some wry observations on life
12. Dung beetle can pull 1,141 times own body weight
13. Paul Fussell, warrior against war, dies
1.
"The lack of popular interest in the natural history sciences, failing some other cultivated interest, is unfortunate both for the individual and for the community....The natural surroundings of Californians are singularly rich and varied. A scientific interest in at least certain features of our natural environment, as for example the trees, shrubs or herbaceous plants, directs one to useful and agreeable intellectual activity. Accurate and detailed knowledge of even a small area lifts the possessor out of the commonplace and enables him directly or indirectly to contribute to the wellbeing and happiness of his community."
-Willis Jepson, Trees of California, 1923
"I think biology must be one of the most satisfying careers because the things you are studying are so absolutely and endlessly real and interesting and directly important. You never have to doubt the validity and interest of what you are doing." Peter Raven
“[Biology] is the least self-centered, the least narcissistic of the sciences—the one that, by taking us out of ourselves, leads us to re-establish the link with nature and to shake ourselves free from our spiritual isolation.”
Jean Rostand, French biologist 1894-1977
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2. Hi Jake:
As you know, the planning department and Board of Supervisors are supporting large development at a rate not seen since Willie Brown left office and not all of it meets laws on the books.
The 8 Washington Development has been approved to exceed established height limit of 84 feet by massing densely packed buildings up to 134 feet tall on Washington at Drumm Street on the Embarcadero. This height exceeds the established limit by 51% and will effectively create an uncomfortably dense wall of buildings where step backs should be employed. It will not be a pedestrian friendly experience and the showy buildings are out of character with the architecture of this important historic district.
Additionally, the parking that has been allowed to go unchecked is completely contrary to Transit First criteria. It will allow almost 2 parking places per person despite the fact that the development is at the nexus of the best transit options available in the City. This development will offer the most expensive condos in the City and it is expected that the mind set of the uber rich clientele will preclude their even considering using mass transit – thus the need for excessive private automobile parking spaces.
People are encouraged to come to the fundraiser, give what they can and help prevent this bad development from taking place.
Jan Blum
FOGG INVITES YOU TO OUR FUNDRAISER PARTY
THURSDAY, JUNE 21, 2012 - 6:00pm at One Ferry Plaza.
See this link for details. Invitation
This fundraiser is to help us put a Referendum on the November 2012 San Francisco ballot.
The Referendum will ask the citizens of San Francisco to vote on whether the City should allow “spot zoning” height increases along the Embarcadero.
Should you not be able to attend, your contribution is welcome - see this link: Donations to FOGG
We look forward to seeing you there.
Janet Lautenberger
Friends of Golden Gateway
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3. Update - April 22 Vandalism at LEJ Native Plant Nursery, Candlestick Point:
The nursery will be getting a new secure cyclone fence as well as a cargo container to store tools. The main need right now is for volunteers to help at the nursery as well as at the Yosemite Slough and Heron's Head Park restoration areas. Volunteer coordinator, Francis Mendoza, is working on a new volunteer schedule for July. You can email Francis at francis.mendoza@lejyouth.org for the new schedule. There WILL be the regular 1st Saturday work party July 7, 10 to 1, at the nursery, 1150 Carroll Avenue.
For more information or to make a financial contribution visit:
http://www.lejyouth.org/news/news.html
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4.
SAVE THE FROGS! at the EPA's Atrazine hearings
On Tuesday I gave a 25 minute presentation to the US Environmental Protection Agency's Scientific Advisory Panel at its Atrazine hearings in Arlington, VA. I have given over 200 presentations since I founded SAVE THE FROGS! four years ago, and this is definitely one of my best, so please go listen to it:
Here is an mp3 of my speech (right-click to download).
Also, here is a PDF of my slideshow and here is some text from my speech. Learn all about Atrazine right here.
Kerry Kriger
“The earth has spawned such a diversity of remarkable creatures that I sometimes wonder why we do not live in a state of perpetual awe and astonishment.” Howard Ensign Evans
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5.
San Francisco Natural History Series
Above and Below San Francisco Streets
In Search of Eradicated Landscapes
Guest Speaker: Glenn Lym
7:30pm, Thursday, June 21st, 2012
FREE at the Randall Museum, 199 Museum Way, San Francisco, CA
Architect Glenn Lym will speak and show off parts of the 3D CAD model he's been working on of early SF topography, roughly 1850 through 1890. Talk includes short video of the history of GG Park.
This talk is given as a part of the San Francisco Natural History Lecture Series presented by the museum. It examines the modification of the original landforms of the western and eastern ends of the San Francisco Dunefield, a landscape erasure largely complete by the end of the 1800s.
We begin with a look at the history of Golden Gate Park through a 20 minute video. And we move on to a live presentation of material related to the development of Market Street, creating the flatlands of SoMa, Union Square and the Tenderloin. Materials include period photography, current and CAD based videos.
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FUTURE TALKS
http://sfnhs.com/upcoming-speakers/
7/19 San Francisco's Thriving Ravens – Adrian Cotter
8/16 Wild Foods Foraging, the Good, the Bad, and The Ugly - Jonah Raskin
9/20 Bay Area Life Cycles - Becky Jaffe
10/18 The UNnatural History of San Francisco Bay - Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
11/15 Forgotten Landscapes: California 500 years ago - Laura Cunningham
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LAST MONTH'S LECTURE NOTES:
http://sfnhs.com/2012/05/31/san-bruno-mountain/
Saving San Bruno Mountain: Past, Present, & Future
Guest Speaker: David Schooley
A number of years ago, Dave Schooley of San Bruno Mountain Watch, was ready to give up the fight, move on, find some other pastures. He did some travelling, and ended up at San Bruno mountain in Italy. There he ran into a local who been born in Half Moon Bay and knew both mountains. The one in Italy had a monestary on it, one that had devoted itself to nature, and had nurtured their mountain. It renewed Dave's desire to carry on the fight back here in California.
He has been working to protect San Bruno mountain for 45 years, and there are still threats chipping away at what is left of the San Bruno's natural state. Dave gave us a tour of the mountain, its canyons, dense scrub, oak woodlands, its foxes, coyotes, and mountain lions, its wild flowers, and birds, and its long history. There have been humans around and on the mountain for thousands of years, as evidenced by any number of shell mounds.
The mountain might have been developed much earlier, without much of a fight however, if it had not been for garbage. As the areas around train tracks between Brisbane and Candlestick became a dumping ground for San Francisco, there wasn't much interest in living next to the smells of rotting garbage.
Real threats came back to the mountain when the Bay Area as a whole began to wake up to the state of the environment and the bay itself. With the area cleaned up, great hopes began to arise about what could be done. There was even plans to shave the top of the mountain off and make high rises. Most of the mountain at the time was owned by the Crocker Family. While there is land preserved as park, land donated to and donated by the county, there is still plenty of private land that might be developed.
Much of the fight has centered around endangered species like the Mission blue butterfly. The butterfly's endangered status saved the mountain from further development. That and the efforts of people like Dave Schooley, and all those who came out to fight and protest development plans. The big dividing line in mountain activists has been around endangered species on private land. A loophole to the ESA, called Habitat Conservation Plans were invented at this time. It
allows landowners to develop their land, provided they can recreate that habitat elsewhere. In practice this has not worked out. It's lack of accountability, and test-ability aside, the practice of using HCPs has now spread nation wide.
The problems and challenges aside, Dave, still seems to have great hopes for the mountains and the wider region… proposing wild life corridors between the mountain and Lake Merced, McLaren, and lands to the south.
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6.
Has the moon been up there
All these nights
And I never noticed?
A whole week with my nose
To the ground, to the grind.
And the beloved faithfully
Returning each evening
As the moon.
Where have I been?
Who has abandoned whom?
~ Gregory Orr ~
(How Beautiful the Beloved)
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7.
WILDFLOWERS OF THE HIGH EASTERN SIERRA NEVADA
August 6-10, 2012
A special trip to benefit the
Regional Parks Botanic Garden
offered by the Friends of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden
FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO REGISTER:
Visit www.nativeplants.org/EasternSierra2012.pdf
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8.
How much easier natural representation would be if plants and animals could speak for themselves. But not only does nature lack such a voice, it also shows no sign of possessing the values, beliefs, and ambitions that we might think appropriate if it could express itself. It shows no sign of wanting representation, either, or even grasping the concept.
Campaign on behalf of the natural world may seem like a natural thing to do, but there is nothing in the natural world itself that resembles such behavior, such awareness and concern.
Cooperation exists, yes, and community, but both are born of instinct and opportunism. So while human beings are increasingly responsible for the endangerment of other species, they are the only species that considers endangerment wrong or reversible. Given a chance, coyotes would chase black-footed ferrets into extinction. Ferrets would do as much to prairie dogs, without a second thought, without any thought at all.
By all indications, predators do not ponder the consequences of their actions, and they certainly do not take up the cause of their prey. They eat them.
Excerpted from Still Here, Can humans help other species defy extinction? Essay by Edwin Dobb from High Country News 18 December 2000
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“The world is in the midst of a mass extinction unlike any since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Extinction rates are currently estimated anywhere between 100 to 1,000 times greater than normal.” National Wildlife Federation
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"Biologists will never be sure that they have found and named every last species on Earth. But they have a long way to go before they can even start to wonder." Nigel Stork and Kevin Gaston, New Scientists, 1990
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9.
All about bulls and bears
Wall Street: a Cultural History by Steven Fraser
The Wall was originally built to keep people out. Seventeenth-century Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam, fearful of attacks by natives, the rival colonists of New England, and bears, erected the wooden stockade from the Hudson to the East river. It was also intended to keep the settlers' livestock, including bulls, in. The English, when they had taken over Stuyvesant's little republic, built the street, and the name and the psychology stuck--a defensive, self-contained community, worried about bears but jealous of its bulls.
From book review in Guardian Weekly, 3-9 June 2005
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10.
It's Your Last Chance to Take the Green Connections Survey!
The Green Connections online survey ends June 30th!
Tell us how we can improve your path to the park at http://greenconnections.sfplanning.org!
The survey should take about five minutes to complete and is completely confidential.
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11. Some observations on life
Jesus was a Jew, yes, but only on his mother's side.
Archie Bunker
Unless you hate your father and mother and wife and brothers and sisters and, yes, even your own life, you can't be my disciple.
If St Luke is to be believed. See Luke 14:26
Most of my friends are not Christians, but I have some who are Anglicans or Roman Catholics.
Dame Rose Macaulay (1881-1958)
In Burbank there's a drive-in church called Jack-in-the-Pew. You shout your sins into the face of a plastic priest.
Johnny Carson
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12. 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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13. Paul Fussell, warrior against war, died on May 23rd, aged 88
Jun 9th 2012 The Economist
IT WAS never clear to Paul Fussell just when his innocence was lost. It might have been that November night in 1944 when his rifle platoon took a wrong turn in a small wood in Alsace. He was 20. The ground was cluttered with strange objects; when the sun rose, he found himself among the open-eyed corpses of Germans who had been killed the day before.
Or it may have been what happened a few months later. His unit ran into an artillery barrage in which pieces of shell ploughed into his leg and back. As he lay there, bellowing with anger, he felt fine red spray falling on him; his buddy Edward Hudson had been so riddled with bullets that the contents of his torso were forced out of the holes in the back of his field jacket. Those who observed the world’s wars from afar, Mr Fussell noted dryly, failed to realise how often soldiers were hurt by the violent impact of pieces of their friends.
War—especially the two “great” wars of the 20th century—had to be sanitised, justified, even glorified, for public consumption. But Mr Fussell made a public career out of refusing to disguise it or elevate it. War reduced human beings to serial numbers, “quasi-mechanical interchangeable parts”, and their opponents to vermin who could be slaughtered with “crazy brutality and sadism”. The second world war, his war, was called “just”, though wars erupted only once all laws and rules had broken down; it was called “good”, and “necessary”, but for those on the ground (a quarter of whom admitted to vomiting or soiling themselves, out of panic, before they went into battle) the war had no meaning, beyond the fact that the quicker they got it over the sooner they could go home.
Home, for him, was the upper-middle-class bit of Pasadena, California, a neat, pretty patch where nothing had occurred to make flabby “Boy Fussell” want to go and kill a German his own age. And then kill more. Unbelievably, though his bad leg still buckled whenever he jumped out of a truck, he was about to be sent to Asia when the war ended. He thanked God thunderously and often that the A-bomb had been dropped on Japan.
Afterwards he relished Samuel Johnson, Pope and Swift, and spent two decades writing and lecturing about them. Yet he was still at war. With a view now honed sharp by all that 18th-century satire, he began to tease out the ironies of recent conflicts: the fact that, for two archducal lives lost in Serbia, 8m young men died; or the fact that the standard-issue New Testament he had carried in his left pocket, purely to ward off bullets, also contained the Ten Commandments, enjoining him not to kill. He admired hugely the poet-officers of the first world war, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves, “true testifiers” who could deftly squash the old patriotic lies. In “The Great War and Modern Memory” (1975), he traced comprehensively the way that particular war reversed the ideal of progress, dragging its shadow through literature, music and art, tarnishing for ever such romantic notions as “honour”, “chivalry” and “valour”, and ushering in sceptical modernism in its wake.
Attacking the furniture
That war, at least, had been full of soldiers’ voices, punning or lyrical or obscene. The second war Mr Fussell found strangely silent, even though, as for the first, he spent weeks in the Imperial War Museum in London reading muddied notebooks and letters from the front lines. What his war seemed to coin most readily was coarseness, acronyms and, above all, euphemisms, beginning with the very word “conflict” itself.
Once on that trail—generally, telling the truth and exposing cant—he also found plenty of peacetime targets for his pen. In interviews he was amiable, even sentimental; he laughed readily until, like a bear’s, the gaze set and the broad claw swiped at something he abominated. He mocked Americans for their class divisions and status symbols: the proles for their polyester, the middle classes for their perfect lawns. He decried “comfort stations”, “dining experiences”, fringed upholstery, framed diplomas and collar-gape jackets. In “Abroad”, he lamented that mass-tourism made all places comfortably alike, and dulled the capacity of people to see in unconventional ways. In “BAD: or, The Dumbing of America” (1991) he sustained a book-long polemic against “lite” drinks, processed cheese, stretch limos, turndown service, butterfly corkscrews and all things “inflated by hyperbole and gilded with a fine coat of fraud”. This “great crappiness”, he wrote, was essentially American, leading some of his countrymen to wonder whether he had stayed in Europe, read its books and imbibed its arrogance for too long.
BAD would never end, he declared, as long as naive and impressionable people were ready to be flattered and deceived. And what about war? There the prognosis was every bit as bad. He had hardly been the first to describe it as it was: there was no pussyfooting in the “Iliad”. But plain-speaking made no difference. As long as there were 19-year-old boys, as he had been, and as long as those boys ached to prove their manhood by enlisting, there would be war. The same loss of innocence that had enraged him for life would happen again, and again, and again.
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