Art is the elimination of the unnecessary. -Pablo Picasso
Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold. -Leo Tolstoy
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. -Walt Whitman
1. Loren Eiseley and the birth of flowering plants
2. Environmental questions to ask candidates for Pacifica City Council
3. Golden Gate Park Oak Woodlands in SF Chronicle
4. Talking food and sustainable agriculture in San Jose
5. Fun and learning at Mission Blue Nursery Wednesday 5 Sept
6. Feedback: Paul Ryan on hunting/Jefferson St trees saved
7. Practical advice for attracting birds to garden
8. Birding - you see more than birds
9. Banana Slug, by Dan Liberthson
10. Asphalt to Ecosystems: Design Ideas for Schoolyard Transformation
11. Rancho Corral de Tierra public meeting Sept 10 in Montara
12. Garrison Keillor reads Liberthson's Child's Play
13. Humorous (?) reflections on Hurricane Katrina - Tom Toles
1. Loren Eiseley - 3 September 1907 - 9 July 1977
Earth Day, 2011 a 2006 NPR interview with Michael Lind on Eiseley's Immense Journey essay on flowers. Lind was struck by Eiseley's essay "How Flowers Changed the World," in which Eiseley recounts the remarkable point on the Earth's timeline at which a new, encased-seed (angiosperm) technique for spreading genetic information arrived.
The fantastic seeds skipping and hopping and flying about the woods and valleys brought with them an amazing adaptability. If our whole lives had not been spent in the midst of it, it would astound us. The old, stiff, sky-reaching wooden world changed into something that glowed here and there with strange colors, put out queer, unheard of fruits and little intricately carved seed cases, and, most important of all, produced concentrated foods in a way that the land had never seen before, or dreamed of back in the fish-eating, leaf-crunching days of the dinosaurs.
Lind wisely identifies the risks Eiseley and other poet-scientists like him take when they use "figurative language with mystical or theological overtimes," yet we are still moved by those leaps to accept Eiseley's inspirational cinematic imagery. Eiseley considered the importance seeds came to have for humans and concluded that "the weight of a petal changed the face of the world and made it ours."
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2. What environmental questions would you like to ask candidates for the Pacifica City Council?
Pacifica's Environmental Family, in collaboration with other groups and like minded individuals, has just started plans to host a 2-hour forum for Pacifica City Council candidates on environmental issues in late September or early October. (Date, time and place TBA.) Part of the forum's planned format is for each candidate in attendance to respond to a set of questions that have been sent to them in advance. (We will also invite those in attendance in the audience to write their questions on 3 x 5 cards at the beginning of the forum so we ask them questions that aren't included among the advance questions.)
We'd like to invite you to reply to this email with up to 3 questions you'd like to be part of the advance set of questions for the candidates. The planning committee for this forum - me, Dinah Verby, Ian Butler and Cynthia Kaufman - will review the questions we receive and put together a set of questons to send to each candidate for their review prior to the forum. Deadline for questions is this Saturday, September 8th so we have time to collate them and choose a strong set of questions drawn from your collective environmental wisdom. We are looking for questions that can be answered by a simple "Yes" or "No" or questions that are more open ended. Again, please limit your proposed questions to 3. Mucho mahalo.
Roy Earnest, President
Pacifica's Environmental Family
agewaver@earthlink.net
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3.
S.F. boosting Oak Woodlands trail
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4. Bay Area Open Space Council
Talking Food in San Jose
Do you live in the South Bay or on the Peninsula? Do you work in or really care about sustainable agriculture? Do you want to get out of the office and learn about what’s happening in the field?
Join us for our Fall Gathering on September 20 from 10am-1pm at the San Pedro Square Market in downtown San Jose. We will to talk about opportunities, partnerships, funding and more reasons for us all to get involved in sustainable agriculture. Speakers include:
• Melissa Hippard, Greenbelt Alliance
• Kathryn Lyddan, Brentwood Agricultural Land Trust, moderator
• Andrea Mackenzie, Santa Clara County Open Space Authority
• Kellyx Nelson, San Mateo Resources Conservation District
• Jennifer Scheer, Santa Clara County Farm Bureau
The program will be from 10am-12pm and a free lunch will be served from 12pm-1pm with plenty of time for talking with fellow farmers, growers, ranchers, and eaters.
Get directions to the San Pedro Square Market on Transit & Trails. Share your pictures of local food and farms on Instagram and/or Twitter. And come on down for some old fashioned person-to-person interactions.
Click here to register
Fifteen Years of the Coastal Conservancy
Look at many conservation projects around the Bay Area and you’ll find the fingerprints of the Coastal Conservancy Bay Area Program. They are celebrating 15 years of supporting projects large and small including:
• Creeks and rivers
• Local farms
• Wetlands
And so much more. Read their 15th anniversary report and see where else you can find their fingerprints.
How and Where and When (we know the Why)
Transit & Trails has become a platform for Open Space Council members and partners alike to connect people to Bay Area parks and trails. How do you plan your trips? We’d love to know. Would you take a short survey and tell us?
Click here to take the survey
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5.
Help out at San Bruno Mountain Watch Mission Blue Nursery
Wednesday 5 September, 10:00 AM to 12:30 PM
JS: Directions to the nursery are a bit lengthy. Perhaps you should call SBMW if you aren't sure: 415-467-6631
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6. Feedback
Eric Mills:
Love Barry Lopez!
Thanks for including my Paul Ryan alert, Jake. Subsistence hunting, yes; sport hunting, maybe. Bow hunting? Never. All the studies I've seen indicate a 50% or worse crippling loss, the unretrieved animals dying of shock, blood loss, gangrene, predators or worse.
"How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light." Barry Lopez
Kathleen Hallinan:
Thank you Jake ...As you may or may not know because of your newsletter Liam O'Brien found our cause to save the Jefferson street-trees and agreed to show up at the hearing to support our cause and his magically conjoined at the eleventh hour. O'Brien called me Saturday August 25, after reading your newsletter and told me he would be coming to the hearing.
His discovery or announcement of the species of Western Swallowtail Butterfly found to be inhabiting the London Plane corridors which was scheduled to be at the Sierra Dinner in September was made at the hearing Monday additionally.
AT the eleventh hour because the support of this cause to save the trees of Jefferson street and NOW the habitat of the SF Native Species butterfly the Swallowtail Swale - had started to go viral. Your newsletter, the South End Club and The Dolphin club sent the letter out to their 1000 members and on the day of the hearing, the DPW planners for the Jefferson Street Scape project changed their plans on their 5 million dollar project to allow 21 of the 25 trees to stay and thus save the habit of this SF Native Species tree.
Jake you were a crucial part of making this happen. Thank You.
You may consider my help in your causes whenever you need. Sincerely Thank You for your part in making this miracle happen
##########################7. Following tidbit of advice is from Dan Murphy, in response to a question of how to attracting nesting birds.
Most yards are too small to stand alone as functional breeding habitats. I'd say for the first step is to plant things that will attract birds. They seem to love the seeds from Hooker's evening primrose which blooms within a year of being planted. The seeds are easy to collect and they become weeds pretty fast. On a positive side, they do have pretty yellow flowers. A variety of berries** (see my note below, JS) that bloom throughout the year is good for a few different birds. Grasses that seed are good. Or take the easy road and use black oil sunflower seeds. Black elderberry** is great if you have the water source for it. You'll get birds greater numbers and you will get some that you may not want, like pigeons. Over a bit longer time frame you might try planting shrubs and small trees. You want cover to the ground and up into the trees. Then for the longer haul you probably need a tree or two. Oaks** are great. Ask Jake. There are other trees that can be productive. If your yard is isolated, you shouldn't have expectations of success. If there are a lot of gardens in your area of backyards, your chances are much better. Another thing you should provide is water. It's so great for birds to have a bit of water dripping into a shallow pool where the birds can drink or bath. Of course you'll get rats and raccoons, but so it goes. What I really hate is when one of the damn raccoons decides to "mark his territory" with large piles of poop right in my little bird bathing pool.
I've given up on getting birds to nest in the yard. Mine is just too small. But I do get plenty of birds to my plants, to my water and yes, I do feed black oil sunflower seeds from September until about March. That covers birds that winter here and brightens my yard a bit.
** JS: A few berried shrubs become invasive and pesty, such as blackberry and cotoneaster. They end up in natural areas, parks, and other people's gardens. There is a profusion of native shrubs that are not only not invasive, but are especially attractive to local wildlife: blue elderberry (Sambucus mexicana), coffeeberry (Rhamnus californica), snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus laevigatus), oso berry (Oemleria cerasiformis), barberry (Berberis pinnata), huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum), pink currant (Ribes sanguineum glutinosum), and others.
Coast live oak is the absolute best for birds. HOWEVER, they get very big, far too big for most San Francisco gardens. If you possible have the space for one, plant it. My oak (which I must prune annually to keep good relations with neighbors) is a delight in the spring and autumn migratory periods. I don't need binoculars are anything--just direct my gaze to the oak instead of the computer screen. Native willows (arroyo willow is best) are also eagerly sought by birds.
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8. One of the rarely spoken advantages to being a birder is the amazing number of cool objects and phenomena you get to appreciate in the course of what otherwise might be a frankly boring lifetime:
http://blog.aba.org/2012/08/cats-hunting-falconry-climate-change-obamas-birth-certificate-and-the-hawaiian-bird-records-committee.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+aba-blog+%28ABA+Blog%29
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9. Dan Liberthson doesn't get bored:
(JS: Sorry - the jpg of this poem failed to load onto this site.)
From Animal Songs by Dan Liberthson, available at liberthson.com
Yogi Berra doesn't get bored either: "When you observe you start to see things."
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10.
Oakland, CA— New Village Press (newvillagepress.net) announces that Sharon Gamson Danks’s book, Asphalt to Ecosystems: Design Ideas for Schoolyard Transformation, has been honored with an American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) 2012 Professional Award and will be featured in the September issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine.
In Asphalt to Ecosystems, Sharon Danks shows educators, planners, and designers how to transform our neighborhood school grounds from gray slabs of concrete into green outdoor spaces for active learning, play, and exploration of the natural world. With more than 500 inspiring photographs from nearly 150 schools in 11 countries, this guidebook showcases innovative outdoor learning spaces and provides a practical framework for change, as well as ways to weave teaching resources into the landscape and revitalize minds, bodies, and communities.
The ASLA Professional Awards honor the top public places, residential designs, campuses, parks, and urban planning projects from across the US and around the world, with particular focus on the environmental sensitivity and sustainability of the projects. Asphalt to Ecosystems has been awarded honors in the Communications category, which recognizes achievement in communicating landscape architecture works, technique, and theory. The ASLA 2012 Professional Awards Jury pronounced it “the most comprehensive and usable book. It’s got great ideas that people can actually translate into practice.” New Village Press would like to congratulate Sharon Danks on this prestigious acknowledgement of Asphalt to Ecosystems’ viability as a blueprint for a new paradigm of play and learning.
The September issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine featuring the award winners will be available in stores as of September 14, and can also be found online.
ASLA’s press release and online coverage of the awards can be found here: http://www.asla.org/2012awards.
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11.
Monday, September 10, 7:00 PM
Farallone View School
1100 LeConte Ave, Montara
Please join Superintendent Frank Dean and other senior managers of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area for a report to the community on Rancho Corral de Tierra as Northern California’s newest national park site. Congresswoman Jackie Speier will also be attending this community meeting. Topics of discussion will include:
• Investigation into the 1/29 taser incident
• Trail planning
• Signage
• Law enforcement and fire protection
• Upcoming community events
For more information, please contact me at (415) 561-4730 or howard_levitt@nps.gov.
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12. Hear Garrison Keillor read this poem:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2012/08/30
Child's Play
by Dan Liberthson
I play the World Series with marbles
on our vine-laced Persian carpet:
its palaces are bases,
its bowers become dugouts
where my heroes' cards wait
for their manager's hand.
I play both sides, home and away,
hitter and fielder—as always
no one on my team but me.
Adult shapes, fat and crooked,
bald and creased or worn thin,
edge around me,
pass through the house smiling
down as if to say dear child
you know nothing outside
your magic carpet, which
one day you'll find is only a rug
that will take you no place at all.
But I have just jumped
an impossible height, caught
Roger Maris' hot line drive to right
and brought it back over the fence.
The roar of the crowd
puts any doubt to rest:
in that moment I am blessed
and that moment is all there is.
"Child's Play" by Dan Liberthson, from The Pitch is on the Way. Reprinted with permission of the author.
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13. Hurricane Isaac heading for New Orleans brought to mind this bitter joke from post-Katrina:
What is George W. Bush's position on Roe vs. Wade?
He really doesn't care how people get out of New Orleans.
(Tom Toles cartoon failed to load.)
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2012 September 04: Hurricane Paths on Planet Earth
(JS: This is worth checking out. I have to ration the number of pictures I have on emails, so I'm not posting this one.)
Should you be worried about hurricanes? To find out, it is useful to know where hurricanes have gone in the past. The above Earth map shows the path of every hurricane reported since 1851, Although striking, a growing incompleteness exists in the data the further one looks back in time. The above map graphically indicates that hurricanes -- sometimes called cyclones or typhoons depending on where they form -- usually occur over water, which makes sense since evaporating warm water gives them energy. The map also shows that hurricanes never cross -- or even occur very near -- the Earth's equator, since the Coriolis effect goes to zero there, and hurricanes need the Coriolis force to circulate. The Coriolis force also causes hurricane paths to arc away from the equator. Although incompleteness fogs long term trends and the prevalence of hurricanes remains a topic of research, evidence is accumulating that hurricanes are, on the average, more common and more powerful in the North Atlantic Ocean over the past 20 years.
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