http://naturenewssf.blogspot.com
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer. -Henry David Thoreau
(A good thing Thoreau lived in the 19th century. Listeners today are even scarcer than then.)
1. Training the next generation of environmental stewards at Commonwealth Club TONIGHT
2. RP Commission to consider amplified sound in parks at night
3. Commonwealth Club series focuses on environmental issues this month
4. Help protect Bay and waterfront from massive Warriors development
5. WALC can use your (chaperone) help again
6. Thinkwalks doings
7. Ft Funston Bioblitz this weekend - take part!
8. Feedback
9. SFPUC bike tour of green infrastructure installations
10. The Voyagers spacecrafts/H.P. Lovecraft
11. One Woman, by Ron Carlson
12. NY Times article on grim prognosis for planet
13. Pedro Pt field trip and/or work party this Sunday
14. Born 22 August 1928 - Karlheinz Stockhausen, seeker of new sounds
1.
Access to Open Space and Training the Next Generation of Environmental Stewards
Philip A. Ginsburg, General Manager, San Francisco Recreation and Parks
In conversation with C.W. Nevius, Writer, San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco is home to one of the densest urban environments in the country and yet it remains known for its close ties to the surround natural environment. Still, due to the limited amount of land and living space, access to nature and parks is a growing challenge. Join us as Ginsburg, general manager of SF Recreation and Parks, discusses how the city is using innovations and partnerships to ensure access to open space, as well as how groundbreaking youth education programs are training the next generation of environmental stewards.
Location: The Randall Museum, 199 Museum Way, San Francisco
Time: 6 p.m. program
Cost: $20 non-members, $8 members, $7 students (with valid ID)
- See more at: http://www.commonwealthclub.org/events#sthash.T99tWMEn.dpuf
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2. RecPark Commission Operations Committee hearings 2 pm September 5, City Hall
Discussion and possible action to approve a policy authorizing staff to approve amplified sound for up to two movie nights per year at any park, subject to certain conditions.
If the Operations Committee recommends approval of this item, it will go to the full Commission.
JS: Count on it. The committee and commission will approve it, under orders from above. One more step in commercializing our parks.
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3. Denise Louie:
Hi Jake,
I really enjoyed the 2 events I attended at the Commonwealth Club, which is focusing the environmental issues this month. For your readers, I've summarized the following:
Last night's featured speaker of "The Tipping Point" was Professor Anthony Barnosky of UC Berkeley, lead author of the "Scientific Consensus on Maintaining Humanity's Life Support Systems in the 21st Century," which the public can access at http://mahb.stanford.edu/consensus-statement-from-global-scientists/.
Professor Barnosky's message, delivered personally to Governor Jerry Brown and President Obama, was "We must work hard to solve these five global problems, starting today:
1. Climate Disruption
2. Extinctions
3. Loss of Ecosystem Diversity
4. Pollution and
5. Human Population Growth and Resource Consumption."
Read about the Governor's response at http://www.sustainablesv.org/ecocloud/index.php/topics/integrating-sustainability/global-scientists-and-gov-brown-sign-consensus.
Then add your name at http://mahb.stanford.edu/endorse-the-message-to-world-leaders/ to encourage world leaders to take action to solve these global problems right away.
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4. Help protect our Bay and waterfront from the massive Warriors developments
Go to http://www.sfwaterfront.org/ for a list of actions you can take right now to help protect our Bay and waterfront from the massive developments:
Don’t believe it when they say “It’s a done deal.” We still have time to reach out to decision makers to convince them building a 12-story high entertainment arena, 90,000 square feet of retail space and a 500 spot parking garage over open Bay waters is a bad idea. But we can't do it without you!
San Francisco Waterfront Alliance
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5. Wilderness Arts and Literacy Collaborative
This is WALC's 15th year at Downtown High School! The new semester has begun and, as usual, we would love to have you join us on a trip.
Our Friday trips are our greatest area of need because we need at least 4 drivers every time. Friday trips are extended field studies, usually outside of San Francisco and lasting well into the evening.Duties include driving a van full of teenagers, watching over them during hikes to make sure no one gets lost or does anything too foolish, and helping them with assignments when needed. Lunch is on us!
We always always need male chaperones for camping trips, but we would be happy to have extra female chaperones too. These trips are all-expense paid, four-day and three-night getaways to very beautiful places. Duties are the same but also include night time supervision and helping teams with cooking and cleaning.
On Wednesday trips, we don't always require drivers but we always enjoy having extra supervision/encouragement/support for the kids. These days are only 3 hours long, alternating between reading buddy trips to elementary schools and habitat restoration trips (planting plants, pulling weeds, getting dirty) to local natural areas.
The dates and locations of our trips are below. Please let me know which trips you want to attend. Also, please feel free to pass this along to anyone you think might be interested.
Catherine Salvin
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6. Thinkwalks
I'm inviting you to my place. True! Please come and help collate sets of Duboce Bikeway Mural cards. You'll be fed homemade vegetarian food and go home with some free sets of mural cards.
Party: 4:30pm Sunday Sept. 15. Details: thinkwalks.org/ai1ec_event/mural-card-party
At that same fun Thinkwalks.org website, you'll find a calendar with some walks you've never seen before and some you have but haven't had the chance yet to take. Please RSVP for one, or request another date so I can set up the walk you most want to attend.
Do you know anyone who does clever pen-and-ink line drawings and adores maps? Maybe I'll hire them! I now have funding for the coolest project: Creating a print version (book) from selected content in the Thinkwalks iPhone apps. I want it to look fantastic, beautiful, artsy. I intend to hire an artist who will help make create it. Send' em my way!
Deep SF Fact: As an outermost outpost in the waning days of the Spanish empire, San Franciscans were essentially abandoned in rags.
San Francisco was so remote. Other than SF's plentiful wool, beef and wheat—which were grown by enslaved Indians at the Missions—few supplies were available. Now and then, San Francisco was re-supplied with metal tools, chocolate and other necessities from Spain, Chile and San Blas (on the west coast of Mexico) under Spanish rule (1770s to 1810s).
37,437 baptized Indians died of disease by 1813. But nobody went hungry. Passing ships came into our beautiful but "underutilized" port to trade or in urgent need of food and water. Mariners were amazed at how plentiful the cattle were here–and their sea-weary crews feasted.
But as Spanish naval reach was overextented and the once-strong empire began to fade, there were times when supply ships failed to come for seven years at a stretch. Despite living in tattered old clothes, soldiers at the Presidio imagined that soon all would be well again. They were in denial just as many Americans are about our empire's over-reaching, and the collapse it will inevitably bring.
Thanks to the remoteness of SF and the cost of reaching it, not one single Spanish ship (nor even a row boat!) could be spared for the outpost in SF Bay all those decades. Missionaries and military men used foot or horse to get around.
The empire was overextended and soon collapsed, with Mexico taking over New Spain. The Mission closed and the Indians were freed, though not in a pretty way. Most were exploited and denied land rights despite the Mexican law ceding them Mission lands.
*Summer has been amazing. I've been in Europe and Amador County, California. I've provided Thinkwalks for the SF Planning Department and the Public Utilities Commission. I led a huge and wonderful group of school children through dune and forest to the sea--which many of them had never before seen. I gave lots of custom tours and developed more programs including an ongoing collaboration with HowAboutWe (for couples).
One couple wrote me after a recent adventure: "We had a great time… That hike was the first part of a day that ended with me proposing to K– on the sand at ocean beach and he said yes. It was a wonderful day. Thank u!"
And I passed the two-tons-of-fish mark on another more personal project: Swimming Upstream, in which I divert, by bicycle, fresh salmon (which was previously thrown away) into hungry mouths at a soup kitchen.
I should add this fun news: I got a small, unsolicited grant from the SF History Association to develop my 1862 flood presentations and research. Cool beans.
Please sign up for new walks & hikes! thinkwalks.org/calendar
--
Joel Pomerantz, Thinkwalks researcher & guide
415-505-8255
thinkwalks.org
facebook.com/thinkwalks
iPhone apps:
thinkwalks.org/apps
Buy someone a Thinkwalks gift certificate:
thinkwalks.org/store/#itemD004
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7.
Fort Funston Bioblitz this weekend!
Biodiversity in the city? You bet!
• Fun!
• Prizes!
• Science!
http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=a4eb4a93ca118e374b1b55e33&id=9069fc4ec8&e=bbf181a9a3
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8. Feedback
Carol Teltschick-Fall:
Jake, Thank you for publishing item #1. It should be noted that UC Berkeley also denied tenure to Ignacio Chapela, who found that GE genes were escaping from planted corn into native crops. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacio_Chapela
An organization called SynbioWatch holds regular talks and forums that might interest your readers: http://www.synbiowatch.org/
Janet Gilles (re Seed to Seed: The Secret Life of Plants by Nicholas Harberd):
Yes, true.
Science does not answer a question it is not asked.
Another example is pharmaceuticals. If a natural remedy is better and cheaper and safer, who is going to spend $200 million dollars to satisfy the FDA that this is so?
No one. Thus all remedies must be very very expensive. When Blue Diamond walnuts wanted to publish science showing that walnuts were beneficial to the heart, FDA said NOT. Had not been through FDA, which was originally set up to test that dangerous toxins that supposedly had a health benefit truly did have a health benefit. FDA considers publishing the science to be making a "drug claim" which in turns requires the $200 (or so) million dollar claim.
Not to make sure that a food long used by man had a benefit or not.
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9. SFPUC bike tour of green infrastructure installations
Hey Jake,
We’d like your help promoting our FREE bike tour which showcases all of the newest and upcoming green infrastructure installations that we’ve been working on. It’s a great opportunity for residents to learn as well as get a good ride in! We’ll visit various technologies, including permeable pavement, raingardens, sidewalk landscaping, bioswales, and systems to recycle and re-use rainwater.
The event will definitely fill up within the next couple of days, so I would recommend people to be hasty about their sign ups. Thank you kindly for your support!
Here is the event link: http://gibiketour.eventbrite.com/
DETAILS:
When: Saturday, August 31, 10am - around 2pm
Starting Place: SFPUC Headquarters, 525 Golden Avenue @ Polk Street (nearest BART: Civic Center)
Ending Place: Soma Street Food Park - eat, drink, and geek out about Green Infrastructure!
Route: This will be a mostly flat ride of about 12 miles.
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10. Writer's Almanac: The Voyagers spacecrafts/H.P. Lovecraft
It was on this day (Aug 20) in 1977 that Voyager 2 was launched by NASA to explore the planets of our solar system and to take the first up-close photographs of the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
Just before the Voyagers took off, a committee of scientists, led by Carl Sagan, decided to put on board each Voyager a message from Earth in case extraterrestrials ever found them. At the time, the Cold War was at its height, and some members of the committee considered that these spacecraft and their contents might be the last traces of the human race left in the universe after a nuclear war. The Voyagers were each equipped with a gold-plated phonograph containing a variety of earthly sounds, including a heartbeat, a mother's kiss, wind, rain, surf, a chimpanzee, footsteps, laughter, the music of Bach and Mozart, and the Chuck Berry song "Johnny Be Good." Carl Sagan said, "The launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet."
Today, the Voyagers have traveled farther from Earth than any other human-made objects in history. Both have gone well beyond Pluto, the farthest planet from the sun. Voyager 2, which launched on this day in 1977, is currently approaching the outer limits of our solar system, headed toward Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.
It's the birthday of the gothic horror author H.P. [Howard Philips] Lovecraft, born in Providence, Rhode Island (1890). As a young man, he became a recluse, sleeping during the day and reading and writing at night. And for a long time, Lovecraft had little contact with the outside world, until it occurred to him that he could support himself as a writer.
At the time, most horror stories were about ghosts and vampires, but Lovecraft wrote about his fear of modern science. He believed that people like Albert Einstein were learning too much about the secrets of the universe, and that those secrets could destroy us. He began to write stories about scholars who accidentally stumble onto the horrible knowledge of lost, monstrous Gods.
He began to publish his stories in pulp magazines like Weird Tales and Astounding Stories. He never made much money from these stories, so he also worked as a ghostwriter, and among his clients was the escape artist Harry Houdini.
Lovecraft said, "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."
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11.
One Woman
by Ron Carlson
Oh, the old love song again and again
devotion and desire without end,
a woman half dressed somewhere and
being admired, or dressed and being admired.
These men go off alone into their rooms
and write it down: she was this and she was that.
Every man says she's the woman above all,
on a pedestal, though no one says pedestal,
that would be crazy,
and there's a thousand of these poems,
and by that I mean a million declarations
of this singular love of this one of a kind woman,
so rare, an absolute phenomenon which
many times rivals the moon or the oceans,
or the wind in the trees or night or any of the
furniture of night or day.
You see what I mean:
big unknowable things.
What are we to make of it? This:
it's true. Each man is telling the truth.
Each woman puts all the other women second.
It's the way. The strap of her gown off her shoulder,
and the paradox prevails. These poems are
all true. Each woman stands alone
in the doorway or on the pedestal
in the perfect light.
"One Woman" by Ron Carlson, from Room Service. © Red Hen Press, 2012.
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12. Mike Wood:
Call it what you want... pollution, global warming, or what ever. With the passage of just a few years (3 decades+-), the changes in our atmosphere suggest a less than pleasant prognosis for the overall health and longevity of planet Earth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/opinion/sunday/gorgeous-glimpses-of-calamity.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130818&_r=0
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13.
On the notice for field trip I am leading with Mike Vasey this Sunday, the 25th, at Pedro Point in Pacifica, I neglected to post this photo that displays some of the reasons it is such an inspiring sight. Photo was taken two years ago in late August after many months of no rain, yet the pearly everlasting were blooming riotously, along with goldenrods and seaside daisy, not visible because low-growing. All these late-flowering composites are very important ecologically, because critters that are abroad then need nectar and pollen sources.
Nature paints with a disciplined palette here, but the beauty is intense nevertheless. The pearly everlasting--one of my very favorite wildflowers--is a dead-white, the most beautiful white I know.
The field trip begins in the afternoon; double the fun and the learning by coming on the restoration work party in the morning.
Pedro Point Headlands monthly work party
Sunday, August 25th
9.45 - 12.30 Habitat Restoration (meet at the Firehouse on Danmann)
1.00 - 3.00pm - Native Plant walk (12.45 meet at the firehouse to join the others)
Please note: Everything you see in this picture is native--except for the three invasive (charismatic?) megafauna you see. Then why does it need restoration? Over the hills from this picture you will see many deep erosion scars in the land from motorcycles chewing it up, and aggressive weeds have moved in. Volunteers are making great strides in returning it to health.
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14.
Born 22 August 1928
Karlheinz Stockhausen, seeker of new sounds
Other children had teddy bears and dolls; but Karlheinz Stockhausen had a little wooden hammer. As he toddled round the run-down family farm in the hills near Cologne, he would hit things with it to see what sound they made. Each note, he established young, sent him a different message. No plink or plunk was quite the same as any other.
Most folks at his premieres in the 1950s and 1960s might have wished he had never discovered that. Each Stockhausen piece was a shock to the system....
Small wonder that Sir Thomas Beecham, asked if he had conducted any Stockhausen, said no, but he thought he might once have trodden in some.
Excerpt from obituary in The Economist 15 Dec 07
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