Collaborative Methods, Summer 2009

2010-06-02T23:08:00.000-07:00

A Micheal Pollan video from Portland, OR

2009-09-20T22:26:00.000-07:00

I watched this Michael Pollan interview done in Portland, Oregon regarding his new book, In Defense of Food. I find him a captivating and "real" person to listen to. This is probably way he gets less backlash from corporations that others activists do. In the interview he is asked about this and he mentions that due to the rhetoric he uses, he usually does not experience too much backlash. He gets some from the corn industry when he talks about high fructose corn syrup. He does try not to name corporations too much. When he talked about Whole Foods though, he did experience a heavy "push-back".

He starts talking about some historical facts involing the Food and Drug Administration. In 1973 the FDA threw out the "imitation rule" that when a food changed its ingredient, like bread for example, it would have to say "imitation bread". This is why you can buy something that says "fat free sour cream" and it you look at the ingredients, it is not really sour cream at all.Pollan also mentions that in 1977, dietary goals were created to eat less animal fats because the government was concerned about the amount of saturated fats in the American diet. The beef industry among others were outraged and stopped this from happening. Instead the goals were rewritten to something like "choose less fatty meats". Since then, you will never see the government tell you to eat less of anything.

He goes on to discuss that in America, the focus on eating is on the science of nutrients and health instead of eating for pleasure, culture and community. The science of nutrients is very young, There is not enough information known for nutrients to have the value that eating good food has, regardless of what the bottle says. This knowledge coupled with what I have learned from my reading Food Politics by Marion Nestle, about how vitamins and supplements are not regulated, has completely changed my mental model of food and supplements. I have probably spent thousands of dollars in my life buying all sorts of supplements. Now I know that a there is no evidence that any supplement does what it says it will. Furthermore, the level of herbs, purity etc. is questionable, a supplement may have a high lead content for example. Good food is the only sure way of staying healthy, and organic food is up to sixty percent higher inantioxidants and nutritional value. (Kingsolver, 2007)

As we have learned in this class, Pollan continues to discuss how the wisdom of food cultures is very important and relevant versus the science we are all used to looking at. There are many processed food products that are masquerading as food. He ends with humorous antidotes like "Don't eat anything your great grandma would not recognize as food" or "The whiter the bread the sooner you'll be dead".

Pollan reminds us that the consumer has a great deal of power with their food dollars and to "vote with your fork!" There are many that can't afford to do this so vote on the policy level too.

I am including a couple links to a local Seattle yard that is being turned into a garden. I wonder how many people a front yard can feed?

Here is a link to this A Micheal Pollan video from Portland, OR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GJuy_dowwU&NR=1

Creating a Food Garden in a NE Seattle Front Yard

Lawn Gone part one and two, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzsyaXPVNKs, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiBgC4Lstd4

Harvest Ritual

2009-09-16T12:35:00.000-07:00

East: The gifts we have received from the bounty of the earth give us reason to be thankful.

In this bread, we are thankful for the abundance of the earth. Grain that was once green, dies and can be transformed into bread and sustains us throughout the winter. May we be nourished that we may nourish life.
When we eat this bread may we remember that we eat the body of the earth, we eat the fire of the sun, the water in the rain and the life in the air.

South: The gifts we have received from the bounty of the earth give us reason to be thankful.

In this honey we are thankful for the work of the bees and all other animals whose life and labour gives us blessing. We bless them in return. In the bees may we see the beauty and possibilities of working in community. May we learn from their example.
When we eat this honey may we taste in it's sweetness the body of the earth from which sprung the flowers whose nectar is the source of this gift. May we taste the sun to which the flowers turned, the rain which filled it with life and the wind which carries it's scent.

West: The gifts we have received from the bounty of the earth give us reason to be thankful.

In this fruit we are thankful for the diversity of life that springs from the body of the earth. In every organism that has been, is and will be we see the face of the divine which is always present.
When we eat this fruit may we remember the mystery that binds together the seen and unseen things of this universe. Though we know the power of the elements: earth, fire, water and air that bring about this fruit's existence, behind all these lies a mystery that we may never know.

North: The gifts we have received from the bounty of the earth give us reason to be thankful.

In the sage, we are thankful for healing power that lies within the earth's bounty. Among her gifts there is medicine for our hearts, minds and spirit.
With this sage we also ask to receive wisdom, wisdom that pervades time, wisdom that will help us choose to act for the benefit of multiple generations.
May we seek this wisdom not only from within but also without- learning from the elements that have been here since the beginning.

Centre: The gifts we have received from the bounty of the earth give us reason to be thankful.

In this wine, we are thankful for the brothers and sisters whose labour create this gift. May we remember the community on whom we depend for our sustenance.
In this wine, may we remember in equal weight the life and death that is inherent in the creation of food.
In the works of the elements and the cycles of the earth, may we see that death and life truley have no separation but are both expressions of the nature and mystery of this world. May we remember, as we drink this wine and eat this food, that we eat from the body of the earth, which is our body. May we remember that when we eat, we eat our own life and our own death.

A Tale of Three Diets

2009-09-15T20:49:00.000-07:00

Throughout this study I have shifted my belief about the significance of traditional diets several times, from assuming that traditional diets were a necessity, to reconsidering and assigning them an “aww shucks” level of nostalgia. Then in the last week of readings I have found an essay that verifies the co-evolution of desert dwellers with their foods. This was the evidence that I had expected to find throughout the research. I now consider a traditional diet significant due to the health benefits people can assume by subsisting on a diet of locally-available foods and for the cultural experience food provides and the informing of who the consumer has become.

The Luiseño Indians are comprised of seven bands from Southern California. Their native land stretched from the coast into the inland mountains and valleys. The Indians accessed different areas depending on seasonal food availability. Upon being displaced from their land and reassigned to an area of poor agricultural viability they were then supplied highly processed commodified food-like products by the U.S. government. This process has destroyed much of the Luiseño food tradition, contributing to widespread degradation of health. The agricultural tradition that does exist consists of large swaths of citrus and avocado trees that thrive on the rocky slopes of the area.

At the conclusion of this un-scientific research project, I believe that the Luiseño Indians have the most incentive to retain their traditional diets. Gary Paul Nabhan, a food anthropologist, has compiled compelling evidence that desert dwellers, as the Luiseño are, from Arizona, New Mexico and Australia have co-evolved with their native foods. This co-evolution allows for greater bioavailability of the nutrients contained within the plants. These peoples have eaten low-glycemic, complex carbohydrate, foods throughout their existence until the introduction of highly processed commodified food-like products. These products, made up of simple carbohydrates, are rapidly metabolized and stored as adipose tissue, causing diet-related diseases that have ravaged native communities, including the Luiseño. Despite all the compelling evidence, the Luiseño appear to be making limited attempts to reclaim their traditional diet. The Rincon Fiesta was an opportunity for the Band to celebrate their cultural heritage and build social capital within their community, but I experienced little attempt by the Band to do so. This observation is based on peripheral interaction with the members themselves. My attempts to learn from Pauma Band members were thwarted many times.

My experience with the Somali Bantus was the most extensive of the three groups and the most fulfilling. The Somali Bantus, having relocated to San Diego four to five years ago, maintain a strong connection to their traditional foods. Agricultural people in Africa; the Somali Bantus are continuing their tradition in their new home. Many of them are farming small plots at New Roots Community Farm in City Heights, San Diego. This farm is being used as an incubation program to find farmers who are interested and skilled enough to begin farming larger plots at Tierra Miguel Farm before moving onto land of their own. A group of 12 men and women recently visited Tierra Miguel to prepare for the training program.

I visited New Roots most recently during the Grand Opening celebration. At that time, I was shown the crops that are being grown by the farmers, beaming with pride. I was then introduced to some of the dishes that were prepared for the occasion. Sambusas stuffed with amaranth leaves and onion then lightly fried, were amazing. Amaranth was also steamed and served like spinach. Amaranth is a huge part of the Bantu diet and is believed to relieve arthritis pain that affects the joints of the lifelong farmers. The last dish I tried was a corn meal cake that is dipped in stewed okra and lima beans. This is regularly consumed as a midday meal and gives strength to the consumer. Okra is also thought to increase male virility. Many young members of the group have widened their food spectrum and now enjoy foods that were abstract when they first arrived, such as pizza. Cheese is uncommon in their native region, leading to its tentative introduction into their present diet, if at all.

Most cultures use festivals, holidays and celebrations to experience culture through food. In a culture that celebrates over 200 holidays, food traditions are celebrated daily. Jews who observe Shabbat have a weekly food ritual that involves preparing all the food on Friday afternoon that will be consumed between sunset Friday and sunset Saturday. There are also prescribed days of the week when Jews will enjoy fleishig (flesh) or milchig (milk) meals. Meat and dairy are never to be combined by observant Jews. This curiosity is due to the representation of life and death that milk and flesh respectively represent. Kosher food is that produced in accord with Jewish law. All fruits and vegetables are Kosher. Slaughtered animals, never pigs though, must be done so by the method known as shechitah to be considered Kosher. This method is supposedly painless to the animal.

The Seder meal, observed the first or second night of Passover, is the most commonly observed traditional meal for Jews. Each part of the menu is representative of their cultural history; four cups of wine, God’s liberation had four stages; at least three matzot, to remind of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; karpas, a green vegetable such as parsley symbolizing spring and rebirth; haroset, a sweet mixture of dried fruit, nuts, apples and spices symbolizing the mortar that the slaves made for bricks in Egypt; maror, bitter herbs such as horseradish, representing the bitterness of slavery and beitzah, a roasted egg symbolizing a festival sacrifice brought in the days of the Temple (Blech 164).

Following the Judaic Diaspora, food continues to connect the people. Their traditional diet has undoubtedly been affected by their present locality but traditions shine through. I admire the pride and joy that their food history elicits. The few opportunities I have had to experience a traditional Jewish meal remain some of my favorite.

One of my readings this quarter, The Future of Food by Warren Belasco is a summary of theorized food and agricultural future states that have been written over the past two hundred years. Whether from the Cornucopian or Malthusian school, not one writer has theorized a future state that has come to fruition more than incidentally, such as approximate global population. Malthusians, doomsayers to some, believe that without dramatic population checks we will starve or be eating analogs made of wood chips or algae.

Cornucopians are technicists to the core, believing that science will always supply an answer. Scientific breakthroughs, increased yields, decreased labor, have allowed population to grow unchecked without generating total global hunger. Arguments against population control center around the need to continuously refill the population pool. By slowing population growth we will be decreasing the pool size from where the next generation of scientists will come. Food and agriculture have resisted the attempt by technicists to apply theoretical developmental models. As much as Americans love technicism, they do not want fully synthetic foods. Algae burgers and sawdust steaks are not as appealing to the palette as they are to the economics of production.

I consider myself a hybrid of the two. I believe that we, as a world community, will experience cornucopian amounts of food by harshly checking the population. I believe that the global carrying capacity is not more than half of our current rate. By increasing global education levels we can learn to enact responsible development practices through which regenerative ecosystems can flourish. Even without drastic population reduction, regenerative food systems will supply more food than can be consumed while improving ecosystem health whereby future populations will not want for delicious, healthful food.

Works Cited

Blech, Rabbi Benjamin (2003). Understanding Judaism. New York, N.Y: Alpha.

The Tourist Test

2009-09-11T21:42:00.001-07:00

Looking back through all of my Kamana II course materials from his quarter and the work that I have done, I thought it might be a good idea to share the initial evaluation, which tested my knowledge of my local ecology. If you would like to participate and have about an hour to spare, then follow the link below. The Tourist Test is in a PDF half way down the page. Jon Young, who is the founder of the Wilderness Awareness School in Duvall, Washington, developed the test. I would love to hear your experience with the test and engage with you in discussion online or during the next residency.

http://www.wildernessawareness.org/home_study/kamana_samples.html

My Tourist Test Reflection from back in July.

I really have a lot to learn. I can’t believe how much I don’t know about common plants and animals the surround me everyday. I have a BA in Social Ecology but I know very little about ecology. I think that I am ignorant to the natural world around me because I am not forced to rely on it for my survival in the short term. Tomorrow and the next day I can go about my daily business and not interact with the natural world at all. However, I know full well that in the long term, if I continue to ignore the natural world, I am actually jeopardizing the longevity of my own survival.

What You Can Do To Help

2009-09-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

Since I first began blogging about national parks and climate change I have had a number of concerned people ask me “What can I do to help?” This blog is dedicated to helping those people find the information they need in order to help both our country’s beloved national parks and our planet.

Let me begin by saying that climate change is not only a problem within the national parks, it is first and foremost a global problem that requires global action to overcome. This means that even if you are thinking “I am only one person, what can I do?” just remember that real, lasting social change often starts out small, on an individual level. Just think what could happen if everyone who felt that way were to actually do something about it and make that one small change in their lives. We could change the world! Being a citizen on this planet means that you are a part of that global whole, and the one small change you do make actually does make a difference to both our national parks and our planet. Ok, I think you get the picture…enough preaching to the choir, here are some very simple things you can do to make a difference in our world and help preserve our national parks, unimpaired for future generations.

First off on a larger scale, the U.S. EPA has a wonderful link listing 25 things you can do to help cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Here are some examples:
*replace conventional bulbs with energy saver bulbs
*look for energy star qualified products
*seal and insulate your home
*use a push mower instead of a gas powered mower
*compost your food and yard waste
*keep your car tuned
*keep adequate pressure in your car tires
*walk, bike, or use public transportation
*use the power management features on your office equipment to save energy
*REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE
*educate your children about how they can reduce their impact
*teach children about climate change and ecosystems

TheEPA site also has a GHG emissions calculator that can estimate your household’s annual emissions and offer ways to reduce them.

Next you can support the National Parks Conservation Association, a non-profit organization created in 1919 to support our national parks. The NPCA is constantly conducting studies within the parks with regard to climate change and even has a publication entitled Unnatural Disaster: Global Warming & Our National Parks which is full of information about how climate change is affecting our parks. I highly recommend reading this. While you are there you can find out more about the NPCA, what studies are being done in various parks and pledge your support.

Next you can visit the Climate Friendly Parks website which is a partnership between the NPS, EPA, and the NPCA to help the national parks become carbon neutral and educate their employees and the public about how they can help reduce the impacts of climate change. Here you will be able to see which parks are participating in the CFP program and monitor their progress through the process of becoming carbon neutral. While you are at it you can also find out what you can do to Do Your Part to support the Climate Friendly Parks program.

For those of you who live in the state of Washington you may find this link about what you can do to Help Mount Rainier Become Carbon Neutral informative. You can also learn more about sustainability and how to become a Steward of the Environment at this link also from Mount Rainier National Park.

You can also support your national parks by purchasing an annual pass called the America the Beautiful pass. You can either purchase an annual pass for an individual park or a pass for every national park and federal recreational land in the country. This is the one I choose to get, I believe it cost $80 and it is a bargain for people like me who love to visit our parks and forest service lands. In just a few trips it has paid for itself. The best part of purchasing either pass is if you purchase them actually in the park rather than online, the money goes directly to the park that your pass was purchased in, making it even easier to support the park you love.

Lastly please, please, please (pretty please) vote to increase funding for our national parks. It has been a very common story among everyone in every park I have spoken with that there needs to be more funding for research, repairs, upgrades to greener facilities, maintenance, public education, etc. These places that harbor such unique and pristine environments, rich cultural heritage, endangered and threatened species, spiritual and inspirational landscapes, recreational opportunities galore, and embody the spirit of our nation need your help. They are your treasures, please help to keep them unimpaired for future generations.

An Interview at Pinnacles National Monument

2009-09-10T13:02:00.000-07:00

I recently had an opportunity to interview someone at the Pinnacles National Monument in California where I used to work as a park ranger. It seems that a lot has been happening there since my employment in 2002 and it is all very exciting. The year after I left was the first year that the California condor was reintroduced into the park, something that I wished I had the opportunity to get to see for myself. Many of the buildings that were there when I was are now gone and all of the portable trailers for employee housing have since been replaced with dormitories. The park has acquired some land just outside of the east entrance and now has a campground where they offer ranger led interpretive talks about the park along with night hikes to star gaze and stroll along the trails by moonlight, something that I think is absolutely awesome! The park is also home to talus caves which were created by large boulders lodging themselves into the narrow canyons. These caves are home to the Townsend’s big-eared Bats which are listed as a sensitive species. The rock formations in the park are made of rhyolitic breccia which is composed of lava, sand, ash, and angular chunks of rock that ejected from a volcano many years ago. These crags and cliffs are home to over 20 different species of raptors with some species nesting on a yearly basis. Altogether Pinnacles is home to over 140 species of birds. Pinnacles National Monument was established in 1908 to preserve the stunning rock formations for which is was named and originally only protected 2,060 acres. Today the park encompasses 26,000 acres and now protects a rich cultural heritage as well as a unique ecosystem.

Since I knew someone that still worked within the park I was able to have a very candid and openhearted conversation about what was going on in the park with regards to climate change. My correspondent, who I will call NPS employee to protect their privacy, informed me that the park has partnerships with North County High, Salinas High School, Hartnell Community College, and a non-profit organization called Pinnacles Partnership. The schools get to come explore the park and learn about the cultural and environmental resources found there, which is a great step in my opinion to create a community of caring, aware, nature loving park advocates. Pinnacles Partnership provides funding for many programs at the park including education and youth programs, habitat restoration, and recovery of the California condor. I next asked NPS employee if there was much talk within the park about climate change and they informed me that there was actually a lot of talk about it. The downfall to all this talk was that everyone talking about it was going in a million different directions and not getting anything done. I next asked about the parks status in the Climate Friendly Parks program mentioning that I had noticed that the Pinnacles had completed the workshop and had applied but had not yet completed their greenhouse gas inventory. NPS employee said that they already knew this and sadly stated that it had not yet been completed because everyone in the park was too buried in other projects to collect the information and that it was low on the list of priorities. NPS employee did inform me that there was an exhibit at the public information center entitled “Climate Change, What Can We Do?” which informs the public about steps they can take to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions. NPS employee expressed that they would feel so happy if only one person every day saw this and practiced these habits to reduce their GHG emissions.
Finally I asked NPS employee this question, “What is/are the most frustrating thing/s going on with regard to research and public education about climate change within the parks?” to which I got this reply:
“I don’t really see what other parks are doing, what studies are going on in the parks. How can we affect people at home? How do we make it matter to them? What kind of research is going on in other parks and how are they relating to their visitors? Is the information they relate to the public based on speculation or fact? I would really like to see how climate change is directly affecting plants and animals within this park and how that is affecting the park as a whole. I feel that the parks must work together on this issue in order to make things happen.”
This has really had me thinking a lot about what I can do as a passionate advocate of our country’s national parks. There are a lot of ideas bouncing around in my head about this right now. Once again it has been proven to me that there needs to be some sort of communication and information sharing happening here that is currently absent from present procedure. Once again I am coming away from an information gathering session with more questions than answers. Perhaps it is here that I will find my answer. Maybe the answer I seek is indeed in the form of a question.

Second Interview

2009-09-10T01:02:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at http://environmentspirituality.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/second-interview:

My second interview for this research project was with a theologian and academic from a local university’s Divinity School. Sue, as I’ll call her, is now retired, but worked to bring some programs and classes looking at ecology and theology together during her duration at the university. She also does volunteer work in the religious environmental arena.

When I asked her about her personal connection to the world of environment and spirituality, she responded,* “All creation is sacramental, a revelation of the God. The here and the now… The universe is alive. There is no such thing as ‘secular.’ I believe in one divine spirit which gives life and spirit to everything. To trees, to rocks, to us… We are all embodied spirits. It is sacrilegious, sinful, to act otherwise. We are part of one integrated divine revelation.”

It is this conviction in myself, that everything is sacred, that everything is part of the divine (however you may define that, even if the definition is strictly non-religious and much more scientific or ecological), that started me on this research project. Sue and I have different religious backgrounds, but we certainly agree on this point. And it is a point that I am seeing again and again in my reading as well.

I asked Sue what role she saw for the religious environmental movement in helping bring about transformation or social change that would move the world in a more sustainable direction. She replied, “The role of any church is to facilitate and enhance our relationship with the divine. It is to create the environment for this to happen. Each age, each era has its call or purpose. The Great Work of our generation, as Thomas Berry said, is to turn this around, to move from a era of domination to an ecological age. The Great Work of the church is the same – to teach the ecological age, to model it. Our well-being and our souls are connected to this work.”

Further, she went on, “Religion does not provide the answers about what needs to be done; it grounds us to be able to make the changes we need to make. It provides incentive, reason, and command to do the hard work of making the world a better place.”

I remarked that during this quarter, as I read about environmental degradation, pollution, climate change, the terrible challenges that face us – and yes, possible ways to address these issues – in my Environmental Science class, I found myself deflated and sliding into hopelessness. But when I turned to my reading for this course of study, I found my hope and my faith in our ability to create change returning. My reading on eco-spirituality made me feel better, and hopeful, every time. I have been reflecting that this grounding and foundation may be one of the real values of incorporating spirituality into environmental work.

Sue agreed. “Jesus taught us that resurrection, newness, and change is always possible. That is one of his core teachings. Losing hope is losing faith.” Additionally, “God works through us. We have to do the work for God’s work to be able to come through.”

Like my first interview, I went away inspired, and with several more books for my reading list.

* My quotations are not word-for-word what Sue said, but do capture the direction and main points of our conversation.

Discovering the Sweet Green Ball

2009-09-08T14:55:00.000-07:00

The Luiseño diet is the one closest to me, physically. The Pauma Band of Luiseño Indians owns the property where I live and work. They have inhabited Pauma Valley and the surrounding areas forever. Of the three cultural groups that I am studying, co-evolution should be most prominent within their diet. Just a few miles from the farm are two other Luiseño reservations, Pala and Rincon. The annual Rincon Fiesta was held recently and I visited to see what types of food were being offered. In many cultures, festivals and holidays elicit traditional foods being prepared en masse that may have lost their place in the every day diet. At the Fiesta I found chicken, popcorn, watermelon and Mexican food; tamales, tacos, burritos. Nowhere did I see wiiwish, the sweetened acorn mash that had been a staple for California Indians nor wood rat that had been considered a delicacy.

Many of the reservations in the area are home to Mexican immigrants, so the introduction of Mexican food into the Luiseño diet is not unexpected. The Luiseño are an agricultural people, maintaining large swaths of citrus and avocado orchards to this day. Maize was one of the earliest South and Central American foods that spread north into present-day USA. Native peoples were the original bio-technicians, of course, cultivating teosinte and selecting to produce something far more reminiscent of today’s maize. In just 2,000 years, teosinte the size of a fingernail evolved into present-day maize. For that reason, popcorn does not strike me as being an odd food either.

Whites introduced watermelon when they settled in California. The story of acceptance into the Luiseño diet asserts that an old Indian woman with a keen sense of smell had went out in search of an unfamiliar sweet scent that floated in on a breeze. She returned with a large green ball and volunteered to eat it first. If it was poisonous and she was to die, it would not matter because of her old age. She broke it open with a nearby stone and scooped the soft pink flesh into her mouth. She fell to ground, shaking and the others assumed she had died. But she opened her eyes and exclaimed it to be delicious and they all ate. The Indians saved the seeds and began to cultivate their own watermelons in Southern CA. The original “green ball” was believed to have grown from a seed that floated downstream from a field that a white man had planted.

Popcorn and watermelon are not foods that I think about in reference to traditional Indian diets, but they are part of the Luiseño past and Mexican food is prominently part of their present, as it is for most Southern Californians. These three foods were all introduced in distinct ways; popcorn through domestication of a wild plant and subsequent trade, watermelon, literally by chance, floated in on a stream and Mexican food was introduced through mass migration. Of these, watermelon represents the only food that was introduced by a single event.

Perhaps, time was the only limiting factor before whites, in need of supplemental protein, traded watermelon for wood rat. I will never know, but I do know that watermelon has persevered where wood rat has not. And likely, time remains the only barrier before watermelon is phased out in favor of another exotic food that thrives in the sandy soil of Pauma Valley. Evolution is a traditional aspect of all diets, be it through domestication (teosinte into maize), introduction (tamales and tacos) or chance (watermelon). The day will come when people long for the past when watermelon was the stereotypical summer food, before turning their attention back to whatever has taken its place.

Map Making

2009-09-08T00:32:00.001-07:00

I have been to Meadowbrook everyday for the past couple weeks. Upon walking there this afternoon I began to notice how familiar I am starting to feel with the 9- acre park. My focus has been on creating maps of the study area. I have created six maps in total. Each map focuses on a different element of the landscape. The first map is the Master Map, which served as the basis for the creation of the other five maps. On the center of each map at the crosshairs is my anchor point. From the anchor point there is a radius of 100 paces (500 ft.) in four directions; Magnetic North, South East and West. From those four points I determined the circumference of my study area.
The second map I created highlights all of the roads and trails in the study area. Most of the trails are cement and are carefully maintained by the city.
The third map, Vegetation, is only scratches the surface of the numerous plants and trees in the study area. Research for this map alone could have taken up the entire quarter. But for the sake of time, I chose only the highlights one may observe when they visit Meadowbrook for the first time. Identifying all of the plants and trees has been one of my biggest challenges in this course thus far. Plant identification has also been one of the most interesting aspects of this course as well.
The fourth map is a topographical map and it was created from the data I had gathered in the field and the USGS topo maps of the area that I found online.
Meadowbrook Pond is part of the Thornton Creek Watershed. The fifth map illustrates the hydrology of the study area. I have also done a significant amount of research on the entire watershed, which will be in another post and not shown on the hydro map.
The Soil and Rocks map illustrates the variation of the ground structure. Meadowbrook contains rocky areas, grassy meadows, and wetlands.
None of the six maps resembles a professional map, but they all serve their purpose for this course and for my future experiences at Meadowbrook.

No More Maize and Tomatoes!

2009-09-07T09:23:00.000-07:00

As I approached this study, I expected to learn about co-evolution between plants and people and why specific diets have become prominent in certain areas. Maize is consumed nearly globally, but an entire diet, it does not make. If maize is not supplemented with other crops, the health of the consumer will quickly deteriorate. Rice and beans, peanut butter and jelly on wheat, these simple foods provide all the essential amino acids needed for a human to thrive. I wanted to learn what the Jewish and Somali Bantu versions of PB&J were.

I retain that co-evolution is important. It tells a story, but maybe it’s no longer the most significant aspect of traditional diets. The tradition itself, the tying of the present to the past is the most significant aspect. Our past has shaped who we are. Globalization has encouraged us to expand our dietary repertoire. Food, knowledge and people rapidly move around the globe, affecting all that they come in contact with. While I know not what the equivalent of a Somali PB&J is, I will continue to look until I achieve the satisfaction of tasting it.

In regards to promoting re-adoption of ones traditional diet, doing so may be irrelevant. A diet fit the needs of a specific set of circumstances, be it availability of goods or trade partners. The tomato was not widely accepted into Southern Italian cuisine until the 19th century. What would become of their traditional diet if I advocated for a reversion to pre-tomato days? That would surely be seen as a loss of tradition. The changing of diets is not evil; it is natural, not just among cultures but individuals as well. I retain concern when the change is so rapid that the physiology of a people is not able to evolve with the prominent foodstuffs in their diet. This is when diet-related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity run rampant. We must look to the past as we move forward, in life and in our food choices to avoid exposing ourselves to unintentional consequences that certain food choices elicit.

Lessons Learned

2009-09-05T15:34:00.000-07:00

From my environment & spirit blog:

I had a second small group discussion organized today, this one with a group of local Quakers. I prepared more or less the same introduction and the same questions as I had used on my earlier small group discussion held at a Pagan gathering. I was interested to see what were the similarities and differences in the overall responses or themes arising from the two groups.

However, no one showed up for my small group discussion. I suspect there are several lessons for me to learn in this. Perhaps the largest is that I need to meet the schedule and needs of my audience, not myself. (Given time constraints since I work and go to school, both full time, I fit this in where I could make it.) I also did not reach out to specific individuals asking them to come, which I had thought about doing, because I just ran out of time. And I scheduled the conversation for 11:00 on a Saturday morning, when the room was available, but people would have to make a special trip to meet with me.

I spoke with several people at the Meeting in order to organize a time to hold the discussion and advertise that it was happening, but I did not ask for assistance or work with them to encourage people to attend. One way to encourage participation in such discussion groups would be to work within the committee structure of the Meeting body. In scheduling this event, I spoke with the Clerk of Worship & Ministry Committee, who was quite in support of the talk but was out of town today. Since I continue to plan to develop this inquiry into a thesis, and I’d like to talk to some Quakers along the way, I think my next step is to engage further with the committee and see where that takes me.

The good news is that I was able to schedule three interviews, instead of the two I had planned for the class, so I will be able to balance out this missed opportunity.

Summer School Can Be Dangerously Unproductive

2009-09-05T10:27:00.000-07:00

As some of you might have noticed, I have not posted in a while. While the subjects I'm studying are interesting to me, I find myself saying "YES!" to social activities far more often than to homework. I've never been very good at studying during the summer. I remember having a list of books to read for high school and waiting until August to actually start them, cursing under my breath that I was missing out on the last few free days I had. This summer seems to be no exception.

Trying to buckle down I've spent some time at the UW library, reading through the Socologia Ruralis Journal that Britt suggested I look at. It sounds dull, right? For someone who's into agriculture and history and sociological phenomenas, this is like the jackpot. Suddenly, I'm reading about "Women in Rural Farming Communities", "Medicinal Folk and Foods in Southwestern Germany", and "Transcending the Gender Imbalance in Historical Agricultural Societies". HOLY CRAP, I've been studying the wrong subject and feel pulled to explore the roles of gender in agriculture. Who knew there was such a thing?!

For the most part, I have been sheltered from this issue by working in organic farming and often in egalitarian communities. Whenever I have stepped out this bubble, I attributed the shock at my ability to use a shovel or drive a tractor as a matter of ignorance and an exception, not as a rule to how the world works. Perhaps it was growing up in a home with muddled gender roles, it does not occur to me that women "can't do" certain things, or anything for that matter. It fascinates me to learn how others are pushed down because of their gender, be they women or men, and I feel compelled to explore this more. I'm not sure where this will take me, but I'm curious to find out...

A Reenchanted World Part II

2009-08-30T21:42:00.000-07:00

Originally posted on my Environment & Spirituality blog:

Although it’s been several weeks now since I finished A Reenchanted World by James William Gibson, which I wrote about earlier, I did want to return to it before moving on to my other research.

In my previous post, I summarized the historical forces that helped develop or influence the culture of reenchantment. Gibson then describes some of the unintended consequences of this culture of enchantment. The increasing popularity and sense of connection to the environment and the land led to increased human interaction, which in turn led to environmental devastation and a diminishing of the sense of sacredness in those special places. Environmental degradation has come from tourism to places as diverse as National Parks and Caribbean resorts, from exurban development where homes are built in formerly wild land, and from outdoor motorized recreation (jet skis, snowmobiles, and off-road vehicles, which are terrible wasters of fuel and cause habitat destruction) and a related culture which views nature as “‘primeval chaos’” needing exploration (p. 153).

Further, an unintended consequence of the culture of enchantment’s aesthetic “favoring magnificent landscapes and large animals” is that it “inadvertently devalues and leaves vulnerable all that is smaller and plainer,” so that “efforts to save small, plain-looking creatures [is seen] as a giant waste, a ludicrous impediment to progress” (pp. 160-161). Of course, those plain creatures and landscapes are important ecosystems like wetlands and tall-grass prairie, or are important warning signs of greater environmental impact, like the spotted owl.

Additionally, “contradictions within the culture have weakened the movement” (p. 168). Contradictions cited include a debate over whether people and animals can live side-by-side, opinions on hunting, the business of zoos, animals theme parks, and black market trade in wild animals which call upon the culture of wildness but without actually letting animals remain wild, mariculture such as farmed fish, and the transformation of Native American culture by casinos and gambling.

On top of this, “the enchantment culture and environmental movement came under deliberate, organized attack from the Christian right, the Bush administration, and much of the business establishment” (p. 192). Under Bush, fossil fuels were prioritized, forest and wildlife areas were opened for extraction and road-building, environmental protections were gutted, and government staff and climate change scientists were discredited and silenced. The Christian right, with a focus on the Biblical message that God will destroy the Earth after the Rapture, do not see a need to save the environment. In fact, Gibson writes, they believe that “the Earth is Satan’s home, and all animals and plants are connected to his demons” (p. 201) and that “working for conservation is not only unnecessary but an affront to the infinite power of God” (p. 202). Reading this section, I was struck by the sheer numbers of the American public open to these religious arguments – “a third of adult Americans … considered themselves to be ‘born-again’” (p. 197). I was also heartened by the rise in the evangelical environmental movement, which is a large, growing, and different perspective on the evangelical view of the environment – seeing the need for stewardship and care, and calling for action from the evangelical population (p. 227).

Gibson closes the book on a high note, describing a renewed interest in the “less dramatic” creatures and landscapes and biodiversity, conservation and restoration successes, and “significant environmental victories” in the past few years (note: the book was written before Obama was elected, so these predate the change in administrations) (quote from p. 228 and p. 221 respectively). Gibson sees the culture of enchantment in as unlikely a place as the scientific UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which calls for a restructuring of the economy in order to “‘recognize the true value of nature – both in terms of an economic sense and in the richness it provides in our lives in ways much more difficult to put numbers on’” (p. 246). (This report echoes many leading environmentalists, economists, and think tanks on the topic of environmental economics, an area I find exciting and interesting.)

The book ends with the following: “Despite periodic losses and setbacks, the momentum behind this cultural transformation continues to build, and it suggests that anyone who cares about the Earth should take heart… The spread of enchantment means that the environmental movement and its allies can now shift their strategy from defense to offense. Such an offensive strategy will require a strong proactive agenda for environmental reform… The reenchantment of nature – if coupled with political courage to act – offers a chance to remake the world” (pp. 251-252).

Gibson’s description of what the culture of enchantment is (see my previous post, third paragraph) is exactly what I want to explore in my inquiry. While Gibson did discuss spiritual and religious movements that are part of this culture – my specific area of focus – the book, and the culture he describes, turned out to be much broader than I originally imagined. There is value in this for me, as my focus on the spiritual (which comes out of a desire to look for the inspiration and meaning behind beliefs and action) could keep me out of the practical, which is very important too. So I found this book to be very good for setting the framework of the “culture of enchantment” and the environmental movement. However, following my original intent, the next pieces of literature I will talk about are focused more on the spiritual and religious.

Treat farmers like gold

2009-08-30T16:23:00.000-07:00

During our interview with Chris Curtis, Director of the Neighborhood

Famers Market Alliance http://www.seattlefarmersmarkets.org/, a
community based organization that supports seven of the Neighborhood
Farmers Markets in Seattle, it became very clear, very fast, what she
saw the organization’s main goal to be, “It is all about the farmers.
They are heroes and we need to treat them like gold.”

This attitude is central to the vision of the “producer only”
markets that NFMA manages, in which farmers direct sell their produce
to shoppers, earning the full dollar value of their farm products.
Being that the NFMA’s markets help more than 100 of the region’s
small, diverse farms stay in business, it isn’t surprising that the
mission of this organization is to keep the markets about the food.
Quite diplomatically, Chris explained to us how their seven markets,
which originated with the University District market, differ from
others in Seattle that sell items like crafts, flowers and cotton
candy. By keeping the focus on food, the markets can continue to
support both the consumer and farmers interests to buy and sell fresh,
local food.

It was remarkable to hear Chris describe her journey in this business
that began in 1993 when she quit her job in search of working towards
something that she was passionate about. After visiting farmers
markets in California that valued the local farmers, Chris and a few
dedicated volunteered spent countless hours to bring those type of
markets to the neighborhoods of Seattle.

Chris still remembers the very first day of the initial market in the
U District. She recalls the 17 farmers that set up that morning, and
that she was expecting, at the most 150 consumers to show up. At the
end of the day, 800 consumers had visited the market, proving the need
for fresh and local produce in Seattle. So how has NFMA kept their
organization about the farmers after all of these years? This has been
accomplished by including several local farmers on the organization’s
Board of Directors, actively requesting feedback from farmers
regarding NFMA policies and continuously working to build
relationships between staff and farmers.

Climate Change and National Parks

2009-08-28T15:28:00.000-07:00

What are some of the effects climate change could have on our national parks? Why is it important to understand these impacts and what does it mean for our future enjoyment of these places?

In order to understand the effects of climate change on our parks we must first understand the impacts of climate change on our global environment. Some things, such as warmer average temperatures, are kind of a “no-brainer” but what does all of this mean? How will it impact the flora and fauna, our hydrologic cycle, or our air quality? It is a relatively easy determination to make because it is already happening. Here are some examples of the effects:

 Changes in soil temperature & moisture affects soil microflora & microfauna
 As temperatures change animals seek different & more optimal habitats
 Sensitivity to temperatures affects the reproductive biology of many species as well as how they rear their young
 Temperature increases can cause a reduction in the number of species within a community
 Population densities & geographic distribution of insects change as ambient temperatures change in their ranges
 Sex of many reptile species is often determined by temperature thus the effective population of one sex limits that populations genetic diversity
 Global temperature changes can lead to massive reorganizations of the time, activities, and movement patterns of animals
 Drought causes leaves of plants & trees to turn yellow as chlorophyll production is reduced, cavitation increases and plants dehydrate making them more attractive to phytophagus insects leaving vegetation susceptible to insect outbreaks
 As sea ice cover declines, arctic marine ecosystems will suffer from coastal erosion, melting of tundra/thawing of permafrost, loss of algae, elimination of ice associated communities such as polar cod, and a loss of habitat for ice platform dependent species such as polar bears, seals, and walrus.
 Increased wildfire frequency
 Increased windstorms sometimes causing the mortality of entire stands of trees and leaving the stressed survivors susceptible to disease and insect infestation
 More extreme and unpredictable weather patterns (floods and droughts) cause damage to resources

These examples are merely a drop in the bucket of what we are faced with in regards to the effects of climate change on our environment. While it is understandable that Earth undergoes periods of warming and cooling it is evident that our planet is currently undergoing a very serious and disconcerting period of rapid change. In the last century our planet has warmed an average of 1.3F. This rate of warming is faster than anything on record for the past 1000 years. Emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane have been on the rise since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The concentration of these gasses in the atmosphere is more than 70% higher than pre-industrial levels, and according to the EPA combustion of fossil fuels account for most emissions in the US. Like it or not our environment is changing. Alpine species are running out of higher ground, polar species are running out of ice, droughts, floods, heat waves, and intense hurricanes have increased, glaciers and snow packs are disappearing, sea level is rising, arctic sea ice is thinning, and our oceans are becoming more acidic. Bearing this in mind, it is not hard to imagine how climate change will, and already is, affecting our national parks.

It is no secret that Rocky Mountain National Park is currently undergoing a battle with bark beetle infestations that are killing millions of trees. It is believed among entomologists that these massive infestations are a result of climate change. Remember those phytophagus insects? These insects are specialized to detect ultrasound and vibrations from cavitation (the breaking of water columns in trees) caused by drought and reduced chlorophyll production.

In November 2006 over 18 inches of rain fell in just 36 hours in Mount Rainier National Park. This was the most damaging flood in the park’s 108 year history, breaking utility lines, washing out roads, trails and campgrounds, and filling streams and reservoirs with mud and debris. Some major roads through the park were closed for a year. It is estimated that rebuilding will cost between $36 and $100 million.

Glacier National Park may soon be called “Puddles” as many of the glaciers retreat from view and often disappear altogether. Dan Fagre, a USGS ecologist who works at Glacier, estimates that by the year 2020 there very well may be no more glaciers in the park. This means more than just less ice in the park. It also means the destruction of fragile ecosystems that have taken thousands of years to develop destroying the treasures the park was created to protect.

A hot dry climate weakens trees and vegetation making them more susceptible to fires. Record heat waves make for extremely dry vegetation and can even turn good intentions into disasters. A prescribed burn for brush control in Yosemite National Park recently jumped fire lines and as of yesterday evening (August 27, 2009) has burned an estimated 2200 acres and is only 10% contained.

The North Cascades National park is one of the largest and most rugged alpine wilderness in the Lower 48 and its 300 glaciers cover more area land than any glaciers than in any other national park south of Alaska. It is home to grizzly bears and wolves as well as virgin Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata) and Douglas fir (pseudotsuga menziesii). As the climate warms glaciers retreat and alpine meadows disappear leaving high-mountain species like the pika no where higher to go.

Alaska‘s national parks provide valuable habitat for caribou, which is still central to the diet and culture of many Alaskan Natives. A warmer climate has pushed the caribou as far north as they can go as the tundra ecosystem is being pushed steadily north. In some places in Alaska warmer winters increase the frequency of freeze-thaw cycles which creates thick layers of ice that caribou must break through in order to forage. In other places the snowfall is so heavy that caribou have a hard time finding food under deep snowpack.

Biscayne National Park in Florida, a popular marine vacation destination, generates millions of dollars every year for local economies. The coral reef that attracts so many visitors is now fading, its brilliant colors turning white as they lose the tiny algae living inside the cells that give them their color. This bleaching also causes long term changes in the communities of fish that live on the reef. Diseases that thrive in warmer water have increased dramatically since 1994.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited park in the country. Every year more than 20 million people drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway which connects the park with Shenandoah. Increased traffic and the resulting smog decrease the air quality in the park, compounding an already existing problem.

Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Joshua Tree, and Yosemite National Parks all have higher ozone levels than allowed by EPA health standards as warmer temperatures boost the formation of ground level ozone.

Documenting, understanding, analyzing, and interpreting the changes currently taking place in both our global environment and within our national parks can provide crucial information on how we can deal with what is coming our way, what we might expect to happen, and how we can prevent or minimize the effects of climate change. This is the exact reason why it is necessary to establish and fund scientific research within the parks. We need to accumulate the knowledge necessary to formulate a comprehensive, adaptable and systemic plan to minimize or eliminate the threats to these valuable resources.

The species within the parks will not be the only ones suffering the consequences of climate change. Visitors and neighboring communities will also feel the effects. Poor air quality will decrease the number of days that people with respiratory problems such as asthma can safely enjoy the parks. Poor visibility due to smog will degrade the quality of those grand vistas in places like Joshua Tree, Great Smoky Mountains, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. Increased natural disasters not only damage park structures but take a toll on gateway towns such as the hard hit Flamingo area just outside of the Everglades National Park. Just getting into many parks could prove to be difficult as flooding and erosion wipe out roadways into the parks and inconvenience visitors and spell trouble for neighboring communities dependent on park visitor traffic.

National parks are doing their part to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by taking advantage of solar and wind power, providing shuttle services to visitors helping to eliminate emissions from visitor traffic, converting to fuel efficient vehicles and promoting bicycle use in parks. So far there are almost 50 national parks participating in the Climate Friendly Parks program. This partnership between the EPA, NPCA, and NPS aims to educate every park employee about climate change so they can take action in addressing the problem. The program also calls for each park to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollution as well as educating the public about the effects of climate change on park resources while encouraging them to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions.

It is clear that global warming is a global problem. We all must become more aware of our contributions to this problem and take steps as individuals to reduce the effects of climate change on our world and in our national parks. We must begin now before the things we love disappear forever.

To Be or Not To Be, Organic

2009-08-26T07:44:00.001-07:00

Last Saturday I was pleased to accompany Elise to an event sponsored by CAGJ (Community Alliance for Global Justice) As described by there website

“Our visit to Carnation, WA will begin at Local Roots for a farm tour, and then continue down the road for a work party at Jubilee Farm! Both farm stops will offer opportunities to talk with the farmer and ask questions!”

Obviously this was a great opportunity for us. First stop Local Roots Farm this is a small farm (about 5 acres) and a big inspiration. About 3 years ago Jason was recently married living in a small apartment in capitol hill and having recently passed the BAR exam was a high paid and very unhappy lawyer. His wife on the other hand was interning on a farm and would come home singing. She was only interning for a few months before the land owner (whose name I have regrettable forgotten) noticed her enthusiasm as well as his, shall we say, ripening age and offered the sweet hearts a proposition. Jason quit his job and they split the land three ways all of them now having equal ownership and equal responsibilities. I was impressed by the amount and variety of food that came off of this small farm.

I asked Farmer Jason where he sells his food and to my delight he said to many local restaurants, the Madison Market , CSA partners and a variety of farmers markets. I then asked if his produce would be at the Ballard Sunday Farmers market, as I knew I would, and he said no. “But why not” I replied, this unfortunately opened a can of worms I was not prepared for. I believe the reason he gave was something to the extent that the Ballard farmers market and, the vendors there in, are allowed to participate by the vote of one person. Obviously disgruntled he began opening my eyes to the fairness of this as well as the fact that many of the vendors are retail and not even local retail at that. I have been stewing on this for a while and I understand that from a marketing standpoint it makes sense to appeal to all the yuppie condo dwellers that have been destroying the Ballards vibe for some time. I also know that I am an avid supporter of a non food booth at the market, when the rainy season sets in I usually buy a candle a week from ascents candle. So I am torn but I do lean toward the side of farmer Jason who says farmers markets should be for farmers.

A bit later in the tour we began talking about organic certification, and it turns out that Local Roots farms is not certified as organic, it also turns out that the regulations on organic certification are buried in bureaucracy and loop holes that I am only begging to understand. Thankfully Russ Parsons of the LA times does a pretty good job of describing some of the issues here: http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-calcook1-2009jul01,0,2885942.story So fine organic is all jaded by the media and the money so what do I look for in food now? Well one option is to be CNG (Certified Naturally Grown) as their website states

“Farmers created Certified Naturally Grown to provide an alternative way to assure their customers that they observed strict growing practices. CNG strives to strengthen the organic movement by removing financial barriers to certification that tend to exclude smaller direct-market farms, while preserving high standards for natural production methods.”

Another thing to keep your eye out for is to be Salmon Safe and as their website explains,

“Almost a decade after we first started certifying fish friendly farms in Oregon's Willamette Valley, Salmon-Safe has become one of the nation's leading regional eco labels with more than 50,000 acres of farm and urban lands certified. The Salmon-Safe retail campaign has been featured in 200 supermarkets and natural food stores.
Salmon-Safe is an independent 501(c)3 nonprofit devoted to restoring agricultural and urban watersheds so that salmon can spawn and thrive. We're based in Portland, Oregon.

FYI Local Roots is certified as both Salmon Safe and CNG but to be clear, not organic, are you still with me?

Great, now its time to move on to our next farm this was less chat more dig. We harvested potatoes, I loved it! Again I was impressed by the amount of food we harvested just one strip of land and it gave us about 5 or 6 huge bags, three cheers for mother nature.

The big lesson I took away from Jubilee was Farmer Eric’s (a philosophy teacher turned farmer) method of sharing. At Local roots they had 5 interns that basically were in it for the experience and making about 200 dollars a month working 6 days a week in 12 hour shifts, this is not very sustainable. However Jubilee had a lovely solution members would donate 4 hours weekly to the farm and be given weekly large shares of food in return. Farmer Eric said he has about 80 people on work share, that’s a lot of weeding! Of course this can only work on a larger farm that have that much extra food to give to workers but either way it left me optimistic, as I hope it did you.

An Interview

2009-08-25T03:29:00.000-07:00

As part of my inquiry, I interviewed someone who has worked in the environmental sector for twenty years, including some work specifically with the religious environmental community. One of her areas of expertise is coalition-building, especially among religious and environmental organizations. As I did not ask permission to publicly use her name in this blog, I am just going to call her Jane (not her real name). We had a lovely talk, and if this research turns into a thesis like I think it might, I hope to interview her again.

Part of the interview was Jane recommending authors, organizations, and people working in the religious environmental arena that she thought would be good resources for me. Many of her suggestions have made it into my list of “Resources” to the right. A good part of the interview was a rambling conversation about the topics of environment, spirituality, and the environmental movement. Below are some of her insights and some highlights of the directions our conversation took.

Early on, Jane stated, “The environmental crisis is a spiritual crisis. It is a movement away from oneness, connection.” I began this quarter writing in my syllabus, “It is my belief that this sense of human disconnection from nature is at the root of our current environmental crisis,” so Jane and I were in agreement from the start.

Without separation, she explained to me, we don’t have the experience of coming back together, of union. That longing for union is a driving need. Our separation, and not just from nature, leaves us with a longing to be filled. This longing has found many different outlets in modern society – for example, our materialism, in a world where many don’t have adequate access to the basic materials needed for life. This observation let Jane to say that it was the loss of balance, more so than loss of connection, which is the real crisis. Balance in nature is dynamic and changing and often cyclical, and that is true also in terms of the type of balance we need. It’s not about going back to the Stone Age – it’s about coming back to right relationship here and now.

People want and seek a direct relationship with nature. And yet, we also want to keep their spirituality compartmentalized – something above it all. Yes, those times of that spiritual connection are important. Yet, Jane argued, we also need to reconnect our spiritual life with our “real” life. We have an incredible opportunity at this point in time to reconnect our spirituality and the environment, to reawaken our consciousness, to strive for balance and right relationship.

We spoke about the power of language. “God,” for example, means many things to many people. (Jane’s definition was that it is a symbolic term for whatever we want to be in relationship with. Personally, I like the word “Mystery” to describe what others might call God.) Additionally, religion, spirituality, mysticism, and activism – all are different, but have intersections, and the places where overlap occurs is powerful. Jane notes that Washington State has a large population of unaffiliated religious people – folks who identify as “spiritual but not religious.” (It also has a lot of outdoorsy people. Jane wondered if there was a connection between the two.)

People are attached to their language because it reflects their experience, and it ties them to community. If you can hear beyond the language, to let go of your own prejudices and assumptions, you will be able to find similarities, and be more able to hear what is really being said. As we explored the topic of connection between humans and nature, we acknowledged that our language and our world have shaped those topics into separate ideas even as we tried to describe them as one.

We also talked quite a bit about the environmental and religious environmental movements – and how they have been very separate from each other. The religious environmental movement came about at the same time, but separate from, the environmental movement – because the environmentalists wanted no part in the religious movement, and they generally have not been open to the spiritual aspects of environmental work. And yet, environmentalists use the same language to describe nature as mystics as other religious people do.

One essay Jane recommended to me was the influential Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis by Lynn White, Jr. in 1967, which pointed a finger at Christianity and the Biblical interpretation that humans have dominion over nature. This essay was a factor in environmentalists being wary of religious groups. Further, Jane believes environmentalists were concerned that the religious groups would be out to convert them.

Jane’s opinion was that environmentalists don’t want to connect with moderate religious people because it’s too close to home. 45% of moderate religious people voted for Bush because he talked about values. “Values,” she told me, is a term that means something (it is code for spiritual relationship) to some people, but this was missed by groups for which is meant something different. The progressive left pushed a whole bunch of people away – people who shared their values but came to it from a place of religion. This reflects a lack of recognition from an environmentalist standpoint about what moves people.

My talk with Jane felt like opening many doors. My list of books to read grows longer. The direction my inquiry could take expands. I would love to help bridge the gap between environmentalists and religious environmentalists, and certainly feel called or led to do that in my own spiritual communities. The growth of the religious environmental movement among major religious faiths in this country has the potential to lead to profound change. And yet I worry about some of my own hang-ups about language and my own prejudices – there are some religious beliefs that are in such opposition to my own, could I really be as open-minded as I’d like to be?

I also worry that pursuing how to bridge the gap between these two movements would lead me away from the piece that drives me, my interest in the experience of connection with nature, and the spiritual and holy aspects of that connection. Hmm ... or maybe that experience of connection with nature is actually the piece that would bring the two groups together?

(Originally posted on my Env & Spirit blog).

Update/Checking In

2009-08-24T15:49:00.000-07:00

In my pursuit to learn the science behind the Zero Emission Research Initiative (ZERI), which is based on the work of American biologist Lynn Margulis, I ended up opening Pandora’s box. Luckily at the bottom of the box I found hope and understanding, just like Pandora did. However, the burdensome labor of reading and comparing a multitude of biological theories from Endosymbiotic Theory to Neo-Darwinism and even (Un) Intelligent Design has slowed down my pace to achieve my academic goals that I have set for myself in Collaborative Methods.
I have to admit that I have really enjoyed the journey and the many unintended consequences that have come along with it. Much of what I have discovered on the diversion from my path will be cataloged for a later date.
The main lesson learned here is that if you do not have a background in biology, the stuff I have been reading will blow your mind, while simultaneously turning your brains into scrambled eggs.
Lesson number two is to not let an academic discussion/debate with Italian-Systems- Theorist-turned-Intelligent-Designer deter you from your main reason for going to the park to have a study break and play soccer.

Abandon Any Hope of Fruit

2009-08-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

The inspiration behind this weeks' post comes not from any of my garden books, but actually from a little buddhist nun named Pema Chodron, who changed my life with her simple and light hearted teachings on compassion.
In her book, “Start Where You Are,” Pema addresses the buddhist teaching slogan: “Abandon any hope of fruition.” The gist of the slogan is if you have hope that you will master your bad habits and overcome your insecurities, you never will reach goals. For in looking to the future, you are no longer accepting the preset, and as long as you don't accept yourself as you are in this moment you will never gain the compassion to truly grow. I'm a very goal oriented person and so this is a radical concept for me. If everything is alright in this moment, than what do I have to work for? What do I do with myself?
She goes on to say that one can learn to see our buddha nature, our awakened nature, in everything that we do even the negative stuff. When you are moody you are “moody buddha,” when you are on top of the world you are “on the top of the world buddha, or when you are berating yourself for making that mistake for the 6000th time you are “making that mistake for the 6000th time buddha.”

So what does this have to do with gardening? Gardening with a sacred intention is accepting your garden exactly how it is in this moment. Much of the destructive behaviour we enact on the earth is because we refuse to accept her and her gifts as they are in this moment. We always want something more and something better, and we just create more problems.
Just as we could identify our own buddhas, we could do the same for the garden. When a squirrel keeps eating your strawberries and leaving you none, it's “feeding the squirrels and not me buddha.” When aphids will not leave alone my cabbage no matter what I do, it's “aphids going to town on my cabbage buddha.” Or when a fungus kills off all my tomatoes, it's “tomato fungus is alive and well buddha.”

For people who are waiting for their next meal from their farm or garden, this must sound like elitist and idealistic bull. If a fungus just killed off the crop that was going to feed your family or community, seeing the buddha in that situation is near impossible. I'm not going to pretend that I know an answer to that situation. Only that if as a community, local or global, we were able to practice this level of acceptance, perhaps there would be less people in the world faced with such devastation. Perhaps, we could attend to the present needs of our community, than be distracted by our constant thriving for the future. Is this idealistic bull? I don't know. What do you think?

(Orginally posted on growfoodfeedspirit.blogspot.com)

Wandering Reflections

2009-08-19T22:18:00.000-07:00

Slowing down to explore the abundance, connectivity and wonder of the more than human world reorganizes and checks the ego's assumptions, images and the like that are so pervasive in every second of our lives. Within seconds of letting go it becomes easier to sense the wonder and mystery of place. This letting go also opens us up toGaia's natural cycles and systems that so gracefully support the abundance of life found all around us. These are the very cycles, systems and forms of life that we've mechanistically disconnected and removed ourselves from over the past 8 - 12,ooo years. Even in death and decay Gaia has a creative cycle in place, rejuvenating and revitalizing herself and all of life. She is open and transparent about this process. Death, to all life, is inevitable and Gaia is atop of the food chain. I am moved by the honesty, process, color and vibrancy of her creation.

The Second Cocoon

2009-08-19T20:28:00.000-07:00

“To relinquish your former identity is to sacrifice the story you have been living, the one that defined you, empowered you socially - and limited you. This sacrifice captures the essence of leaving home.”
Bill Plotkin

Leaving home (both literally and figuratively) is perhaps the most pivotal and yet horrifying phase on the transcendental journey from adolescence into adulthood, or in Bill Plotkins’ words, “... into the fully embodied life of your soul.” Bill refers to this process as the second cocoon, “the time between death and rebirth.” He further illustrates the meaning of this time in one’s life and the gentleness, mentality, perseverance and creativity needed to wander through this arduous phase through a poem by T.S. Elliot:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be to love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of the running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

As a wanderer in the second cocoon, “Two essential tasks must be addressed: saying good-bye to the old and making yourself ready for the new.” He adds, “There are two subtasks involved in truly leaving home: honing your skills of self-reliance, and relinquishing attachment to your former identity.” Bill provides us with the examples of seven commonly used practices to assist us, the wanderers, through this process: completing unfinished business from earlier life stages, giving up addictions, welcoming home the loyal solider, healing work with the sacred wound, learning to chose authenticity over social acceptance, making peace with the past: the death lodge and learning the art of disidentification through meditation.

The example of learning how to chose authenticity over social acceptance spoke to me the most. “Now in the second cocoon, you must take up the practice of reversing the priority between acceptance and authenticity. Authenticity and integrity become your foundations for asking the deeper questions of soul.” I think I’m a pretty authentic person but there’s something that stirs from within when I think of, read or hear the word authentic. I’ve given this a considerable amount of thought and I think the source of it all is that I’m ready to move on in my wandering. I’ve realized that my soul’s journey is still in adolescence and that I continue to live and guide my life according to ideas, ethics, morals and systems that were formulated when I was both physically and mentally in adolescence. It’s something to realize, truly realize, that the only hinderance in becoming the person you want to be is yourself, or rather your adolescent self. The identity that I’ve so carefully constructed and protected up to this point has served it’s purpose but it’s not who I want to be anymore. It doesn’t reflect the world I see. I sometimes feel like I’m multiple people throughout the day. I have the version of myself that goes to work, the social version, this version of me typing behind the computer, the version of me that... well, you name it. It’s exhausting to even think about, and for what? Social acceptance? Because I’m a Libra and want everyone to like me? It doesn’t make any sense. Bill, in his seemingly infinite wisdom, has this to say about authenticity:

“Distinguishing authenticity from deception - at any stage of life - requires the ability to access and understand your emotions, desires, and values. But the more advanced practice of choosing authenticity over social acceptance requires something more: you must tell yourself and your intimate others the truth, all of it, as deep as you can, especially when it’s difficult. What you express is from the heart and intended to serve both yourself and others. You must adopt the practice of making all your actions align with what you know to be emotionally and spiritually true.”

I believe that authenticity emanating from the souls purpose is key to creating sustainable and effective communities. These are the communities we want to reestablish, right? Communities made-up of people who want to be there, who need to be there. I also understand that communities can be a source of authenticity. Perhaps the reason we lack fully authentic people (and therefore, soulful adults) is because our culture subscribes to or is even based on inauthenticity, secrecy and the like?

I end this post with an announcement... I have decided to join a men’s group called, Making Soup from the Bones: Grief, Initiation and the Healing of the Masculine Soul. Our purpose will be to mythically and creatively redefine and heal our souls through community. I also plan to begin taking art classes sometime after the new year, working with music in someway shape or form and I will take part in my first week long vision quest (hopefully via Bill Plotkin’s organization or Rights of Passage here in Washington) shortly after graduating at the end of next spring / summer. I can feel my soul reaching out, wanting to change. It’s been doing this for some time now and I’ve managed to ignore it but I can’t any longer...

--------------------------------

Suddenly the outline of his life shimmered like a mirage and twisted itself into an entirely new shape in his mind, and he nearly laughed out loud.

“Of course,” he whispered triumphantly. “Of course!” And he meant by this: Of course I’ve betrayed myself. I was sure I wouldn’t, but of course I have. For comforts, for pleasant companionship, for acceptance, for respectability, for security. For the sake of appearing to be a sensible, mature fellow. I thought I could get away with it, but of course I didn’t. No one can.

It didn’t matter now. The betrayal was over. By night fall he would be behind the wheel of his Volvo with all he would ever need from this life in a single suitcase. It was going to be a nightmarish day, an agonizing day. There were other lives to be shattered along with his own, because other lives had been molded against his. Three others would share in the common disaster, but he would defer all guilt until later. This was the way it had to be.

Because it was time to resume the abandoned search. The search for a road. A certain road.

- Daniel Quinn, The Holy.

2009-08-19T14:19:00.000-07:00

Prior to the start of Summer Quarter, 2009

I have been living near Meadowbrook Pond for seven years now and up until the spring of 2009 I think I have only visited the area twice and on both occasions I only stayed very briefly.
My first visit to Meadowbrook with the intention of surveying the area for my study in the Kamana Naturalist Course was in the beginning my Spring Quarter of 2009 at Antioch. I was to choose a personal practice for my Transformative Leadership course and after a few different attempts I chose to make Meadowbrook Pond the spot for my personal practice and place of daily reflection.
I returned the next day to photograph the area for my Transformative Leadership reports and to send to Dan Corcoran, my future advisor at the Wilderness Awareness School. Above are the photographs that I took that day.

Below is my Personal Practice report from Transformative Leadership back in my spring quarter.

Assignment 2: Personal Practice
Intention: To increase insight and self-awareness: to develop reliance on intuition: and to increase the ability to stay grounded in who you are.
Background: Our intentions are often sabotaged when a lack of awareness of our own assumptions, beliefs and patterns of thinking distort our perception. Likewise, in the hustle of every-day living, and external pressures to conform, we may find it difficult to discern our own inner wisdom. We often become mechanistic, relying on our mental, conceptual ability and excluding other sources of knowing. Adopting a personal practice for the duration of the course will provide an opportunity to experiment with one way to stay grounded and aware, and to access more of your personal resources.
Strategy: Select one practice that you can commit to, on a daily, or at least several-days-a-week basis, for the duration of the course. A practice may be meditation, a daily walk, exercise, inspirational reading, journaling, gardening, etc. On the day of your team’s completion of the assignment below, please be prepared to discuss your journey with the class.

Kamana is:
The Kamana Naturalist Training Program is a four level home study course that covers the naturalist background needed to engage in the wilderness arts, including tracking, bird language, survival and native living skills, traditional herbalism, and naturalist mentoring.
It is the ultimate blueprint for a student's time spent in the field and in conducting nature-related research. Students become confident naturalists, melding modern field ecology with the skills of a native scout. Naturalist and tracker Jon Young, who uniquely designed it to model the process in which Tom Brown, Jr. mentored him as a boy, wrote it.
Kamana is completed "at your own pace and at your own place." It may take one to four years total to complete all four levels of the program.

Since I already have had previous experience with courses like this, Dan at WAS is starting me out at Level II
A two large parts of all the Kamana levels are

Field Exercise One: Finding a Secret Spot
This is an area you visit on a regular basis where you will practice exercises that expand your awareness of nature and knowledge of place. You'll discover it's much more that just picking a spot to sit in the woods. All future exercises will stem from this searching and mapping experience
My "secret" spot (no longer a secret, is the Thorton Creek Greenspace located in Meadowbrook Park.
http://www.seattleurbannature.org/Resources/NEmaps/ne-7.html
You are supposed to pick a space you can easily get to on a daily basis. Meadowbrook is a 5-minute bike ride from my house.

Field Exercise Two: The Sense Meditation
Learning to overcome that little "voice" that prevents us all from really tuning into the language of nature. In other words, "Lose your mind and come to your senses!"
This is really the Personal Practice for Transformative Leadership. I know I will be continuing this after this quarter, I thought I would utilize this assignment to get in the habit.
Deliverables for this assignment and the Kamana course will be journaling, personal and field notes.

There is a lot more to Kamana II, which I will get to in my summer course.

This is also a personal practice that serves my assignment from my monthly men's group. I have been assigned to take better care of myself.
I had a physical exam shortly after my daughter was born and right before I started grad school here at Antioch. It was an extremely thorough. I even had an Echo Cardio test done by a cardiologist. The results of my exam concluded that I was healthy as a horse. My blood pressure was just below 120 over 80, which is a normal blood pressure for my age and condition,
Two weeks ago my doctor told me my blood pressure is now 139 over 89. 140 over 90 is considered high blood pressure. She said that the second I get onto a crowded I-5 my blood pressure will elevate to well over 140 over 90.
I haven’t checked it since then, but I am hoping that my personal practice will help bring it back down.

My Secret Spot:
Thornton Creek Greenspace located in Meadowbrook Park
* The “Secret Spot” is not necessarily a place where no one else can find out about, but more so a place that is special to me, or a place that “feels” like home. It means “special to me alone”. Jon Young has recommended a book by Forest Carter called The Education of Little Tree. In the book you will find the meaning of the Secret Spot that Young is referring to.

Monday , August 17, 2009

2009-08-19T00:26:00.000-07:00

Monday, August 17

Response to The Resource Trail, A required reading in the Kamana II Naturalist Course- Introduction by Jon Young

Jon Young has an excellent way of communicating to potential or new students. Although is an expert in his field as a naturalist, has studied under Tom Brown Jr. and has founded the Wilderness Awareness School in Duvall, Washington, he still has the sensitivity to not intimidate those who have little to no experience with the natural world.
The majority of Western society these days has had little exposure to the natural world. Individuals cannot be blamed for their lack of exposure. It is simply the conditions in which they have been raised. Our entire Western infrastructure is designed to go against nature, not to be apart of it. One can go from a well insulated, airtight and air-conditioned house to their air-conditioned car in the garage of their suburban home to the parking garage in their office building, which is also sealed and air-conditioned. Then they can reverse the whole process at the end of the day. Exposure time to the natural world for the day: zero.
Chances are they will have a meal or two of packaged food from a grocery store that was processed at an unknown location (maybe not even in the same hemisphere). Ask where their chlorinated, fluoridated water comes from and chances are they will tell you that it comes from either the sink, the pipes or the city.

How can we remove the blinders from the people around us? According to Young, the first step in approaching an individual is to help them realize how unaware they are. An excellent tool that was developed by Young and is used by the WAS is what is called the “Alien Test”. I took the Alien Test when I began Kamana 2. It is a one hundred thirteen question test, followed by a written reflection on the experience of taking the test. The one hundred thirteen questions test your knowledge of native plants in your bioregion, what type of ticks is in your area, hydrology, local wildlife etc. I failed the test miserably, which only tells me that there is a lot I need to learn.

“Why do we despise the planet which gives us life?”
-The Last Winter (2006)

The planet we live on is sick and in danger. Why do we not treat it with the same empathy as if one of our family members were sick? Instead we have created a society that separates us from what provides us with life. And we treat that provider as a “natural resource” and we have done are best to consume as much of it as we can, as fast as we can for the sake of economic growth and progress.

How is progress measured? What are the indicators?

From Monday, July 27

2009-08-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

I have allot of work ahead of me. Tonight, I came down to my secret spot with very little agenda, aside from trying to feel the place out and decide where my anchor point will be. The first place that seemed to feel right was on the side of the brook and underneath the footbridge. The bridge would provide me with a cover for when the weather was not so nice. I thought that being creek side would give me a chance to view more wildlife and the bridge would give me a little privacy without seeming creepy.
After spending twenty minutes there I explored more of the park and settled down in the sculpture area by the main pond. The is a covered bridge here, a view of the pond and overall a wider, more open space. Here I opened up my backpack and got out all my feild guides.
My attempts to identify the two different types of grasses ( or are they rushes?) right in front of me failed miserably.
There is a bit more human traffic over in this section, but overall it is really peaceful.
There is so many different types of trees , flowers, grasses and rushes that I can probably spend all week sitting here trying to identify them all. But right now if I look up I don't think I can define a single one of them with certainty. This is humbling and exciting. This is my new classroom.

From Tuesday, July 28, 2009

2009-08-18T23:44:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Tuesday, July 28, 2009
I rode my bike down to Meadowbrook a little later tonight. It was sunset when I arrived. I changed my anchor point from last night to a spot on the edge of the pond, which was only about 20 feet from where I was previously.
The temperature hit 95 today, and at sunset it was still sweltering hot. I really wanted to jump intot he pond to cool off, but that would be a sure fire way to scare off any wildlife that I was hoping to see.
I sat down on the edge of the pond and poured my self a cup of tea from my thermos. I unloaded my backpack and began paging through some of my field guides in hopes of being able to identify at least one plant or tree. I am pretty sure that I've successfully identified Poison Ivy (pictured). There are a couple other plants and trees that I have photographed but not identified yet.
There was a bit of noise coming from the other end of the pond. I took a walk down there to see what I could see. Fish were jumping out of the water all over the pond. Dragonflies buzzed around everywhere. And then, all of a sudden an animals heads pops up out of the water and starts swimming right toward me. It was a beaver bigger than my dog (I have a 50 lb Staffordshire Bull Terrier). I video taped the beaver swimming around in the pond.

Sorry< i had not realized that my blog wasn't link to the class blog. This is an old post on http://klaatubaradaniktotheblog.blogspot.com/

An Interview at Mount Rainier

2009-08-17T19:20:00.000-07:00

I recently took a little day trip up to Mount Rainier National Park to see what I could find out about what research they are doing and if any of it was spurred by climate change. I had planned on interviewing some people in the park but I did not arrange them in advance. Judging from my experiences in other parks I felt it was best to have the element of surprise working for me as the responses I get are usually a little more candid and open than any I have gotten from scheduled-in-advance interviews. Here is my story.

The trip itself was fabulous. There was an unprecedented heat wave in Seattle and I was excited to get into the mountains where the temperatures were cooler and the air smelled sweet with fir. I made it in record time from my home in Ballard and pulled into the park in less than two hours armed with my annual pass.

As the ranger at the entrance station checked my I.D. I questioned him as to the whereabouts of their resource management department. He seemed a little stunned and dumbfounded and confessed to me that he did not know where it was but he would call his boss and ask. As the cars began stacking up behind me, I waited patiently while he obtained the requested information from the other end of a telephone line. While I waited I wondered to myself why a park employee did not know where one of the most important departments in the park was located. I wondered if he even knew that the park had a resource department. I also wondered if he might be a new employee that had only been there for a few weeks and was still getting acquainted with everything. The sound of him returning to the window pulled me out of my contemplation whereupon he relayed, without conviction, the whereabouts of the department and bid me good day. I pondered this encounter while thankfully pulling out of the entrance station just in time to be ahead of a rental motor home the size of an ocean liner.

The road quickly narrowed as it wound through massive old growth Douglas-fir (pseudotsuga menziesii) dwarfing even the gigantic rented motor home behind me. I quickly forgot about my encounter at the entrance station as I became mesmerized by my surroundings and rolling all the windows down, I breathed in the sweet fir essence I had been longing for. A mile or so into my journey I passed a couple of people in orange safety vests, clipboards in hand, bent over looking at plants along the roadside. As I wondered what they were doing I came to my first of many construction zones. Road repairs were being made to the stretch of road from the Ashford entrance to Longmire. As I sat in line waiting my turn through the construction area I thought to myself “So far, so good! Research and much needed road repairs and I have only gotten 4 miles into the park.” After a few more delays for road repairs, I rolled into the parking lot at Longmire to search for the resource management department. The landmarks and instructions the entrance station ranger had given me were proving to be hard to follow and after searching for 45 minutes I decided to bag it and head on up to Paradise and surprise some unsuspecting personnel there.

As I came around the last turn before arriving at Paradise I was stunned to see a large area of scarred land on my left. It is always strange to see any construction in a national park and I felt myself beginning to recoil from such a blemish on the pristine scenery. It is like taking a sharpie to the Mona Lisa to adorn her with a mustache. Since it was a weekday and I am an early riser the parking lot at Paradise was only about half way full. Normally one has to make a few laps scavenging like a turkey vulture watching to spot a family walking to their car to leave, then wait while they pack everyone in, all the while ignoring the growing line of irritated and jealous people behind you, just to score your much coveted place in the lot. I got a prime parking spot, gathered my notebook and camera and made my way over to the Paradise Lodge to see if I could find an unsuspecting soul to engage in conversation. No luck. But I did pause for a moment to snap some shots of the inside of the lodge.

My next stop was the Jackson Visitor’s center, a short walk from the Lodge. On my way along the path I took note of the areas that were roped off for vegetation recovery. Many visitors to Paradise often trample the alpine meadows trying to get those perfect shot of the flowers in bloom with the mountain standing majestic in the background. This is not a new addition to the scenery at Paradise. I have never made a visit to this place without seeing these areas roped off from foot traffic with signage stating the purpose of their partitions. What I did find both slightly amusing and more irritating was a family of five completely ignoring the ropes and signage to hastily make a short-cut to their car, all the while trampling sensitive vegetation. I wondered what they thought as they climbed over the ropes and skidded down the hillside to their car. For a brief moment, I even considered pointing out to them the signage and giving a little speech about fragile ecosystems. I decided that my intentions would most likely be ill received and decided to continue on to the visitor’s center.

Once again I was compelled to stop and take in the grandeur of Mount Rainier and noticed a new addition to the scenery. Some trail repairs had been made and the new addition of a stair case was placed along the Skyline trail. The stairs were nothing remarkable however inscribed in them was the words of John Muir expressing his feelings about the park from a visit long ago.

After pausing for more pictures I finally made it to the visitor’s center. I could hardly contain my excitement at discovering it was a new facility that had only recently opened to the public. This explained the rubble pile I had noticed on my way in, which was the remnants of the old visitor’s center, something for which I had scolded myself a little in not realizing sooner. As I walked into the visitor’s center I was greeted by a whiteboard giving me the weather forecast and informing me of the ranger led programs scheduled for the day. I was ecstatic to see “3:15-Climate Change”. I reigned in my excitement, barely containing the urge to sprint over to the desk to talk to the rangers and continued my exploration of the new visitor’s center, dropping a few dollars into the donation bucket along the way. After watching a short movie about the park in their little theater, which I am pleased to report, was at capacity, I finally made my way to the desk to begin my inquiry. This is what I learned.

There were two rangers working the information desk that day and I was quickly befriended by one of them, a gentleman I will call Mr. Ranger out of respect for his privacy. After introductions, Mr. Ranger and I began by talking a little about the new visitor’s center. He informed me that the new steep A frame center was much more energy efficient and climate friendly than the old circular one had been using hundreds of gallons less fuel than the old design. He also told me that by taking down the old visitor’s center they were afforded the opportunity to study artifacts found under the old site, there was even a display to show some of the things they had unearthed during the construction process. Sadly, I did not get a picture of the display but it is something worth checking out on your next visit. Next I asked Mr. Ranger to tell me all he knew about any research or programs being conducted in the park regarding climate change and resources. He informed me that the park does studies on light pollution, noise pollution, and air pollution and that the air quality is monitored and can be seen in a display in the visitors center. Mr. Ranger also informed me that at 3:15 every day, as the white board located in the entrance explained, there was a film about climate change and national parks with two people from Mount Rainier making appearances in the video. He confided to me that the film was sometimes difficult to introduce to the public because a lot of the public does not believe that climate change is happening. He also gave me the names of the two resource personnel from the video and suggested I contact them for further information regarding their studies, very helpful indeed. He stated that he was not aware of much of the research being conducted within the park but did say that those two orange safety vest clad people I spotted on the way in were most likely studying the vegetation near waterways to determine soil qualities and characteristics as well as plant migration statistics. We ended our conversation by reminiscing about all the parks we have had the privilege of visiting and working in and I filled my notebook with his recommendations for future visits to parks I had yet to discover. I headed upstairs to check out more displays and sat for an hour watching climbers make their way up and down from Camp Muir as a thunder storm rolled in.

What did I learn? From my previous impromptu interviews at other parks and from Mr. Ranger I have confirmed my suspicions that information is not shared among park personnel, either within the park or among other park units. This lack of information sharing is troublesome to me. Perhaps my mental model suggests that park rangers at an information desk should have all the answers to the questions the general public may ask regarding the park and its resources. Maybe I am expecting too much. In defense of all the rangers I spoke with regarding these topics I must say that I do understand that the NPS probably does not have appropriate funds to train all of their employees to respond to public inquiry about climate change. What everyone I spoke with was able to give to me is a brochure entitled Climate Change in National Parks published by the National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior. This small, yet informative brochure explains that some of the parks are involved in “Climate Friendly Parks” workshops to do what they can to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by using solar and wind energy, fuel cells, electric and hybrid cars, and in areas of high visitation using mass public transit. The brochure also gives links to places where the public can learn more about climate change, but ironically fails to provide the link for the Climate Friendly Parks website. The link can be found here: http://www.nps.gov/climatefriendlyparks/index.html.

At this link one can peruse various presentations (mostly PPT) that were held in various “Climate Friendly” parks. In my exploration of this site I found a publication entitled Climate Change Response also published by the National Park Service and U.S. Department of the Interior which on page 7 states: “While efforts to date are significant –the NPS is not yet positioned to assess the affects of climate change and prescribe management actions that are suitable for parks.”
What does this mean? Are they not yet in a position due to insufficient funding, lack of personnel, lack of understanding, is it because their resource and research system is fragmented and no one can agree on its direction, or could it be that some of the personnel within the parks are those who do not believe climate change is happening. Diving deeper into the website I found a list of parks that are on the Climate Friendly Parks (CFP) roster. Of the 391 National Parks only 49 are listed as members on the CFP page. 22 of these parks have yet to apply to become “Climate Friendly” and 15 are members, meaning that they have filed an application, developed a greenhouse gas (GHG) emission inventory in their park, and completed a GHG action plan. The remaining 12 parks are still in this process.

It is clear that there are personnel within the National Park Service that are aware of climate change and its impacts on the park system. There are also those who are devoted and determined to do what they can to help reduce GHG emissions in the parks and educate park personnel, enabling them to engage with the public about such issues. It warms my heart to know that these people are out there, however more must be done, much more. Ultimately what I learned from this interview is that I have many more questions than answers, that I need to continue my research and efforts to track down sometimes hidden information, and that support and funding for the National Park Service is very much needed in order to understand the impacts of climate change and find ways to prepare for and respond to it.

DRCC River festival and farmers' market

2009-08-16T10:24:00.000-07:00

I attended the DRCC River Festival last Saturday, and learned a lot from putting the survey and display board into use with folks who attended. The survey questions were designed to help us connect to participants, learn more about them and see if they are interested in becoming involved with the cleanup efforts in some way. So we had three questions:

1. Please tell us - are you a resident, business owner, or otherwise use the river in some fashion (whether that's fishing or otherwise)?

2. What are your hopes for the future of the Duwamish river?

3. Would you like to be involved in helping to protect/save the river?

Each time I design surveys like this one I'm reminded to really keep questions short and simple. I could usually get people to answer question #1 easily. For the second and third questions I noticed that most people didn't go into lots of detail other than responding "a clean river", and I had to let go of my tendencies to pressure folks to sign up to help DRCC. I tried paraphrasing question #3 to explain that we are planning to have further conversations with people who live and own businesses in the area about implementing the Vision plan, and that this is also a way that they could be involved, if they didn't show interest in helping with the cleanup. I also think some attendees may have thought we are asking them to actually help clean up the pollution in the river itself. Overall I talked with two young teens, a couple of residents, one former landlord who resides on Beacon Hill, a woman who works at a social service agency in the area, an indigenous woman who lives in Auburn and several political candidates for office.

I also had a less than successful conversation with a guy staffing the "People for Puget Sound" booth regarding the information they have about what kinds of fish and other sealife animals it is risky to eat. I tried asking him two questions: what can we say to people to whom fish and seafood is central to their diets, and are they offering any information about alternatives such as the nearest safe places that people can go fishing in? His responses were short and limited to saying that it's dangerous to consume any fish and seafood caught from the river, and shrugging his shoulders at the notion of offering alternatives. I am guessing that the way I phrased my questions made him feel defensive and/or just didn't connect to his perspective at all. A bit later when I talked to an indigenous woman, I noticed my internalized feelings of trying to get her to "sign up" to be involved with DRCC in some way (such as with the Vision plan implementation conversations) coming up again. This conversation was great practice for me to learn to just listen more genuinely and let go of my tendencies to nudge people to "take action". At the end of our conversation, although she refused to sign up for any DRCC activities she thanked me for listening to her stories of her late husband who was a fisherman in the area.

Yesterday I attended the new South Park Farmers' Market in the morning and helped do outreach for DRCC. We shared booth/table space with SeaMar and I connected with three people: Steve Gisel, co-manager of the farmers' market; Ninfa Quiroz, staff person at SeaMar; and Amaranta Sandys, a local multimedia artist who makes art thru use of clay. Steve stated that the farmers' market has several objectives including bringing together people who haven't had much experience with U.S. business practices, encouraging people to support local businesses and learn to eat more healthy foods. He said that they are trying to obtain funding to hold the market more often than once a month, and they have a business co-op for the vendors who participate. Also he added that although the vendors' earnings might not be very "high" currently they see the participation of the vendors as successful because they're learning how to do business.

Ninfa Quiroz and I talked about her concerns regarding the diet of the Latino community. She expressed a lot of worry about the tendencies of Latinos to eat a lot of carbohydrates, fats, salt and processed foods including in tortillas and tamales. She added that there's ways that people can still enjoy their traditional foods but reduce the amount of fat and carbohydrates in preparing tortillas and tamales. She emphasized that addressing health issues such as diabetes isn't just a matter of getting people to change their diets, they have to change other habits such as increasing their level of activity and exercising regularly. She asked if I could help SeaMar do some health education, and is also interested in the information that DRCC has about the dangers of eating fish and seafood caught from the Duwamish river. She looked at a coloring book for children that is printed in English and Spanish, that teaches children about animals in the local area and said that she would like to see another one regarding the dangers of eating fish and seafood from the Duwamish river. I told Ninfa that if DRCC, SeaMar and the South Park Farmers' market could partner somehow to have conversations about food and healthy alternatives that would be great. I plan to talk further with Cari about the possibilities of doing my Change project around these areas. Although Cari and I talked briefly about what my Change project could be before she left, this was before I had conversed with Ninfa in detail.

I also enjoyed talking with Amaranth, she makes pottery, clay magnets, pendants, beads and earrings with her own cultural style. For instance she has some magnets and earrings that are brightly colored skulls in honor of "Dia de los Muertos", the Mexican "Day of the Dead" celebration. Amaranth stated that she helped emcee at the River Festival last week. She is also connected to local artists' groups.

Joyce

First Small Group Discussion

2009-08-16T03:56:00.000-07:00

I've posted a summary of a small group discussion on the topic of environment and spirituality I led at a Neo-Pagan gathering at the end of July over on my environment & spirit blog. Here's most of it:

I chose the small group discussion model out of what I learned in my Reflective Practicum coursework, that social change comes from people talking, looking at their lives, finding frustrations, and noticing gaps – and then people will want to change. I was hoping to plant some seeds that might lead to noticing gaps and help a movements towards social change in this area of environment and spirituality – but I was also really curious as to what a group of people attending a Pagan conference might have to say about their sense of connection to, or being part of, nature.

In addition to my understanding that Paganism is a nature religion, I know that Pagans also tend to believe that the Divine is immanent – i.e., right here, in us, in rocks and trees and rivers, in critters and clouds, here – as opposed to transcendent, or far away, distant, in heaven, in the sky, beyond the boundaries of the earth. In transcendence, the Divine is not part of the Earth; in immanence, the Divine is the Earth, and all that is on the Earth. I was curious to see if the current of immanence would mean that practicing Pagans had an understanding of humans and nature as being one and the same.

My first question to the group was whether they felt like they were part of nature or separate from it, and why. Now, in a group of 15 Pagans, you have at least 20 perspectives, so I certainly did not get the same response from everyone. I did hear some people describe nature as something they looked for but did not find in their urban setting – that a dandelion growing through a crack in the sidewalk was a small glimmer of nature in an otherwise natureless-setting. This reflects an American cultural pattern of a clear separation between humans and nature (Stewart and Bennett, 1991, p. 115).

On the other hand, I also heard people who described themselves as “a wave, not a particle” and “absolutely part of nature – my life is part of the web of life.” One person relayed that a feeling of separateness from nature was a motivation for them to strive for something different. We spent some time musing on a plastic bottle – how it was made from parts of the earth, how it was a feat of human intelligence and design, how it was part of our cycle now. How, we wondered, did the “sacredness of crappy plastic” fit in to everything?

My second question was how they defined themselves spiritually and how that influenced their sense of connection to nature. Some felt it was their experience of nature, or being in nature (note: use of the word “in,” not “part of”), that drives their spirituality. One person commented that it was an eye-opener for them when they learned that the word “religion” in other parts of the world means how you live every day of your life, because that hadn’t been her experience of religion up to that point. Many agreed that a sense of awareness, seeing little details or “Goddess moments,” recognizing that in nature you never see function without beauty or beauty without function, fed their spirituality.

At the end of our hour together, I felt that we had had a very good discussion and raised some good points with areas to explore further, but I’m not sure (yet) that I planted seeds that will lead to social change. I hope the conversation will continue – perhaps on this blog?

Stewart, E. & M. Bennett (1991). American cultural patterns: A cross-cultural perspective. Boston: Intercultural Press.

Animated Water

2009-08-14T19:27:00.000-07:00

It has finally rained. After about three months of record dryness, wet stuff fell from the sky. Just as the sun seems to spur joyful growth from the plants, rain has a similar effect. After the rains my stunted sage plant gleefully put on new growth. My squash is now over 6 feet long.

Water is the life blood of the garden. It brings to life not only the plants but the millions of microbes and insect life in the soil. How the water falls and flows through the soil is of maximum importance to a healthy garden. One of my garden mentors taught me that the only way to know how to properly wet my garden is to get wet with it. During a rain there is a lot to learn by standing in it, watching how it falls, where the rivulets of water snake along the ground, where it pools and where it is sucked into the soil.

However in a food garden, rain is not always enough and irrigation becomes necessary. Yet the state of our water system is dire. Not only do we waste a shameful amount of water, but we poison it as well. There are predictions that our oil wars will soon turn to water wars. Even here in the Northwest where our water is allegedly the cleanest in the country, it is processed with chemicals and “enriched” with fluoride. Our ground water and sewage systems are overwhelmed with pesticides, cleaners, petroleum products and pharmaceuticals. Overcome with toxins and pollutants, filtered of it's natural minerals and beneficial bacterial, our water has, as scientist Joan S. Davis would put it, lost it's wisdom. We drink this water and we eat it through our food.

Much of what I am learning in this study is how to garden with a sacred intention. Whether it be weeding, interacting with pests or watering, focusing with an good intention can elevate the self and the act, imbibing it with creative energy. However I hear rumors that this intention has a healing capacity. Masaru Emoto is somewhat infamously known for his work with water crystals. In one experiment Emoto exposed water to degrading or affirming words, froze the water and took microscopic photographs of the crystals that form as it freezes. The photographs Emoto produced are said to show that degrading words causes disconnected and malformed crystals, and affirming words created beautiful and intricate crystals.

Sandra Ingerman has done similar experiments to detoxify water calling the process transmutation. For the experiment a group is gathered in a ceremonial meditation with a focus on healing an intentionally toxified receptacle of water. Ingerman would test the pH of the water before and after meditation, and found that post meditation the water indicated lower levels of toxicity.

Naturally, the scientific community has issue with these experiments, and I'll admit, I'm skeptical. However, I can't deny that it makes sense. I know from experience that a positive and generous intention can have a great affect on my interaction with animals and other humans. But these physical life forms are a combination of a variety of elements, water making up more than half. 'Life is animated water' is a famous quote by scientist Vladimir Vernansky.

Why limit the healing capacity of our intentions to animate beings? And really what does it hurt to meditate while I water my garden on the life giving capacity of water, thanking the water for it's gift, and praying that the water can somehow overcome the abuse we've put it through. Regardless of whether or not it does any healing to the water, I believe it will do healing to me.

Orginally posted on growfoodfeedspirit.blogspot.com

Sink or Swim

2009-08-14T12:12:00.000-07:00

The nature of salmon recovery spans regions, cultures, geographies, and lifestyles. Because of this diversity of interests, efforts to restore salmon have become significantly disseminated. Small organizations and site-specific interest groups sprout up when existing organizations fail to align agendas, meet requests, or expand the scope of their projects. Unwilling to give up on the mission, energies are cleaved to form an organization in order to address the specific goals that were previously unattended.

At the agency level, workgroups are delegated to focus on particular issues affiliated with salmon restoration. Since taxpayer money is funding these types of restoration projects, advisory committees are formed for each region and/or project to ensure that the funding is being effectively utilized. It is common for each watershed to have their own council and some even have satellite organizations that while still associated, work on recovery issues in adjacent communities. Spanning the Pacific Northwest, there are thousands of NGO’s, community groups, industries, and governmental organizations working on one specific goal, salmon recovery, but do it in a way that fulfills a specific niche.

This diverse approach to salmon restoration can be beneficial by allowing each community to address and design projects to best fit their restoration needs. However, this has created a vast network of efforts that are detached from one another. Adding to this fragmentation is the competitive nature of applying for federal and private funding on which many organizations rely. As a result, communication and collaboration between groups hardly exists in most regions.

Maintaining status quo at this point is proving to be ineffective on the larger scale as the salmon populations continue to decline and the movement struggles to gain a political foothold. In order to truly create a strong and vibrant movement, organizations need to find a way to unite. This collaborative process can help eliminate redundant and overlapping projects which will then free up resources that can be redirected to areas of need. Personal agendas and small town politics inherent in this effort need to be reminded of the fundamental goal to restore salmon to our waterways. Organizations need to take the initiative to reach out to one another and start brainstorming ways to communicate, share ideas, and work together.

The timing is critical and the work is unprecedented to unify such an expansive and divergent movement, but the longer we wait the more we will lose. Uniting these energies will be advantageous by creating a lean, streamline, and efficient movement mimicking the very nature of the species it is fighting for.

Science In Our National Parks

2009-08-13T11:28:00.000-07:00

When national parks were first established there was little understanding of the resources they contained. Park boundaries often failed to include the complete ecosystems and often did not encompass enough land to support critical habitats. Over the years this lack of understanding has led to resource management issues, loss of resources and in some cases small problems have turned into large ones.
It is unquestionable that the mandate of 1916 that established the National Park Service and protected irreplaceable examples of our nation’s ecological, cultural and historic heritage, but the current science and research program of the national parks is fragmented and lacks the direction that it needs in order to research, understand and preserve these national treasures. The current science program in the park service also has to share its funding with the resource management division. This collective management approach often discounts or reduces the importance of one or the other of these very valuable activities, research and management.
The current Park Service research and resource management practice is divided into three levels as follows:
I. In the Washington office
II. In 10 regional offices
III. In individual park units
The Washington office develops policies and standards, sets priorities, and coordinates research programs. The 10 regional offices conduct and coordinate most of the research that take place within each of the individual park units leaving us with not one plan but ten different plans, each one different in every way. Through contracts and agreements some parks arrange to have research conducted with parties outside of the park system often including universities or independent researchers, while in other parks most of the research is conducted by park personnel. The National Park Service maintains a smaller research staff than any other federal agency making it almost impossible for park personnel to conduct the necessary research.

In the early 1960’s, when the first assessments of the NPS science programs were being conducted, two reports gave significant recommendations regarding the current science program. Both the Leopold report (named after A. Starker Leopold) and the Robbins report (named after William J. Robbins) recommended strengthening the science program. The Robbins report of 1963 states:

Research by the National Park Service has lacked continuity, coordination, and depth. It has been marked by expediency rather than long-term considerations. It has in general lacked direction, has been fragmented between divisions and branches, has been applied piecemeal, has suffered because of a failure to recognize the distinctions between research and administrative decision-making, and has failed to ensure the implementation of the results of research in operational management…It is inconceivable that property so unique and valuable as the national parks, used by such a large number of people, and regarded internationally as one of the finest examples of our national spirit, should not be provided adequately with competent research scientists…as elementary insurance for the preservation and best use of the parks.

Although this report clearly stated the inadequacies found in the current science program there was little done to address the recommendations made in the report. Later in the 1970’s the parks were still plagued with the problems of inadequate funding and argument over who would direct such work. Again in 1977 another report, the Allen and Leopold report, recommended that the NPS give science and research more say in planning and policy making, and again little action was taken. Groups such as the National Parks Conservation Association and The Conservation Foundation published more reports criticizing the management plan and drew widespread public attention on the threats to the parks. Then in 1980, under congressional pressure the NPS conducted an extensive and comprehensive assessment of the parks and their threats. This report documented serious, extensive problems in the parks and recommended these actions: conduct a comprehensive inventory of park resources; establish accurate baseline data and conduct monitoring to detect changes in resources and ecosystems; focus attention on threats associated with adjacent lands; and improve the ability of park managers to quantify and document the effects of various threats. Ironically these were the same suggestions made by previous independent reviews of the parks management plan. Nine years later another report known as the Gordon report criticized the NPS for not fulfilling its obligations to the management and research of their resources. In all over a dozen major reviews over a period of 30 years had all suggested the same thing, and all met with little or no efforts to implement the recommendations.
Our parks today are faced with a myriad of threats. Often the unique qualities, attributes, and resources that led us to preserve such parks are being destroyed. They are subject to a diverse array of human influences, damage to air and water quality, noise pollution, erosion, and an array of inappropriate activities that threaten the aesthetic characteristics and jeopardize the integrity and stability of their ecosystems. For example, the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 severely damaged coastal habitats in Kenai Fjords and Katmai national parks. The extent of the damage is unknown because inadequate research, understanding, and cataloging of park species and ecosystems had not yet been conducted. These are but some examples of the importance that research and science plays in understanding our parks and their resources. It is critical to understand cause and effect relationships within our parks in order to understand if a change to that system is a natural fluctuation or if it is an unintended consequence of something else.
The concept that parks are isolated and removed from adjacent human influences is faulty. Boundaries alone will do nothing to ensure the health of our parks. We need long term monitoring, research, data collection and critical and systemic analysis of information in order to understand the threats to our parks. Our world is dynamic and ever changing, we need a plan to include science and research in our parks that is able to adapt and change with our world.
The National Parks Conservation Association’s Center for State of the Parks program was developed in 2002 to assist the parks in assessing threats to the parks and understanding their resources. They frequently conduct studies within parks to determine threats to the parks and to advocate for more funding for research. These studies are then made public and can be viewed at http://www.npca.org/stateoftheparks/reports.html. The reports and database created by these studies makes available critical information for congress and the public in order to provide up to date and accurate information needed for decision making and funding.
Since the national parks are our canaries in the coal mine and often are the first places that experience quantifiable information about environmental changes and threats they provide critical information regarding global environmental change. It is obvious that our parks have the potential to enlighten us about our natural world, yet this potential has yet to be realized and tapped. This is why it is vitally important that they develop a thorough, comprehensive, and ongoing research plan that involves NPS researchers and scientists as well as independent scientists in order to ensure its longevity and accuracy. The time has come to realize the potential that our parks have to offer for our understanding not only of the parks themselves but of our changing world and its natural processes. It stands to reason that if the National Park Service was created and charged to protect our most treasured natural resources science should play a crucial role in that process.

Works Cited:
States., United. Science and the national parks. Washington, D.C: National Academy, 1992. Print.

Improving our nations food system

2009-08-12T12:21:00.000-07:00

In addition to reading books, doing interviews and writing reflection papers on the subject of the local food movement in North America, our group is also responsible for watching different videos where Michael Pollan (a renowned food activist) talks more deeply on the subject.

The video I watched was a Bill Moyer interview (I have posted part 2 of that interview for your viewing pleasure) I found it an excellent summarization of the many different faucets I have been learning about regarding our nations food system.

The sharp rise in heart diseases and diabetes over the passed 30 years is in direct correlation to the increases in proceeded foods intake for the average American.

Michael Pollan refers to this crises as a literal fresh food desert. There is a rise in demand for locally grown organic produce in urban areas specifically among low income and underserved communities. Many city stores offer countless processed food options and very minimal varieties of fresh fruits and vegetables. It is my opinion that this is entirely unacceptable. Having a healthy diet is an individuals choice but many families do not even have the option to eat healthy having no access to fresh food.

Luckily there is a slow food movement in the works and many farmers markets have begun accepting food stamps and there are also a demand for fresh produce to be served in schools http://www.farmtoschool.org/ hospitals http://www.worldchanging.com/local/seattle/archives/008389.html and jail http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/blogs/80days/2009/06/table-for-two-at-the-county-jail.html

Pollan encourages us to all grow a garden and to cook again he claims that we have turned cooking into a spectator sport, and if we were to spend the time that we watch cooking shows actually cooking we would find we have plenty of time to make dinner. He promotes cooking as the best way to declare your independence from the culture of fast food.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02cooking-t.html?pagewanted=6&_r=1

We have gradually lost touch with some of life’s basic pleasures. We have bought into the propaganda that this country can not feed itself without help from corn syrup. We need to work together organizing our agriculture using sustainable farming practices and not being afraid to spend and afternoon in our kitchens.

Busy, busy, bee and Gardening with All Beings

2009-08-08T12:52:00.000-07:00

Partially because summer has got me running and partially because I couldn't write it any better than how it has already been written, my post today will mostly be made up of snippets from Wendy Johnson's book, “Gardening at the Dragon's Gate.” Lay Zen teacher Wendy Johnson was the head gardener for twenty five years at Green Gulch garden, a branch of the San Francisco Zen Center. In her decades of experience, gardening has been a primary outlet for her Zen practice.
I admit, I sought after her book with one question in mind, which lead me to skip the first five chapters and go straight to “Chapter 6: Gardening with all Beings,” it's sub-title could be essentially “Zen Pest Management.” I wondered how would someone who dedicated their life to awareness, openness and non-violence approach the pest issue? Like most, when a squirrel insists on eating more of my strawberries then me, I am inclined to find a way to get rid of him. But I know approaching pest problems, like approaching many problems, with single-mindedness and without curiosity will do little to solve it. I have become curious how one could turn a pest from a loathed enemy to at least a relationship of mutual respect. Here I turn to Ms. Johnson:

“Has Zen practice helped me be more peaceful and closely hitched to the vast mind of this pestiferous universe? Hardly. Zen practice deepens my appreciation of paradox and relationship, especially with regard to pests and problems. In the garden Zen practice helps me hold still and look at what is right in front me without turning away. And then it helps me to look again [...] In the safe shelter of the meditation hall I even occasionally see myself as a kind of pest: I plague raccoons and deer, pursue spit bugs and flea beetles, and I plot their demise. I, too, am a kind of invasive creature, an “exotic” in California. Hailing from New England, I have replaced pristine native bogs of wild horsetail and stands of California nettles with row after row of introduced red Russian kale and clove scented stock flowers from Southern Europe.

[...] Unwanted creatures are forever arriving at the garden gate and requiring response. In order to respond to an importuning visitor you must first get out of the way and drop your notions of what your garden is[...] Pledging and promising to meet your garden and all visitors is core to every gardener's life.

[...]In responding to pests and disease in your garden, keep in mind the basic teaching of the Buddha that everything changes all the time, combining that with a reminder from the modern naturalist and conservationist John Muir that everything in the universe is hitched to everything else. Follow your affection as you garden and when you meet a pest, eye to complex eye, or shoulder to thorax, consider that this very spit bug doing the backstroke through a froth of expectorated foam may have been you mother lifetimes ago, or from a more rationalist perspective, is your cousin and you share a common parentage. Fold yourself in with the lot of all the shady and noble pests and guests that also love your healthy and diverse garden. Join the party. Your very life and good fortune as a gardener depend on this integrated relationship and on giving up a measure of control in favor of responding to your garden with a playful, observant and wide, pest-integrating mind.” (Excerpt from Gardening at the Dragon's Gate p. 206- 21, Wendy Johnson).

Originally posted on growfoodfeedspirit.blogspot.com

A Reenchanted World

2009-08-07T03:49:00.001-07:00

There's a new post over on my blog where I discuss the first book I'm reading for this class, A Reenchanted World: The Quest for a New Kinship with Nature by James William Gibson. Here's most of it:

In the last 40 years, a movement has arisen which reclaims the sacredness of and connection to nature. Gibson writes, “The ultimate goal of this sweeping change, which I call ‘the culture of enchantment,’ is nothing less than the reinvestment of nature with spirit. Flatly rejecting modernity’s reduction of animals, plants, places, and natural forces to either matter or utilitarian resource, the culture of enchantment attempts to make nature sacred once again…. People respond to the culture of enchantment because it offers them something they need (and cannot find elsewhere in consumerist America): transcendence, a sense of mystery and meaning, glimpses of a numinous world beyond our own” (p. 11).

A Reenchanted World traces the history of this movement. The line of history that Gibson focuses on starts with the rise of Transcendentalism in the 1840s, through John Muir and the first National Parks, through Aldo Leopold and the establishment of modern ecology, and onto the post-WWII years where the use of synthetic chemicals and industry begin to change the environment in unprecedented ways, as described by Rachel Carson. Native American culture was influential in the 1960s and 1970s, as were the first pictures of the Earth taken from space.

The 1970s saw the rise of the modern environmental movement including the first Earth Day, the creation of the EPA, and the passage of major laws including the Clean Water and Air Acts and the Endangered Species Act. Gibson notes that “environmental activism could … be seen as an expression of people’s new awareness of their connections to the planet, their nascent consciousness of being intrinsic part of the Earth” (p. 99). The 1970s also saw James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis’ Gaia Hypothesis, feminist and earth-based spiritualities becoming more widespread, and the beginning of an emerging Judeo-Christian movement calling for stewardship of nature or Creation Care as biblically based and theologically driven. The greening of religion continues to gain strength, and spans across denominations and faiths. Per Gibson, “There cannot be any doubt that beliefs in the sacredness of creation of have radically increased since the culture of enchantment first emerged in the early 1970s” (p. 117).

I would say that my interest in this topic, and my study itself, are part of the culture of enchantment Gibson is writing about. As such, his conclusions make sense to me, but with a third of the book yet to read, I am not exactly sure what conclusions I will draw from the book for my inquiry. The exploration continues.

Additionally, this book has helped me see just how vast the topic of “environment and spirituality” really is. The notes/bibliography section of this book alone has provided me with a very long reading list, one I doubt I will ever find the end of. I chose to read A Reenchanted World first because of its focus on the spiritual aspects of the human/nature connection, which is the area I am trying to focus on. I am finding patterns I want to explore more – the impact of a sense of place, how food connects people to nature, and the role that photography has played in the culture of enchantment (such as Ansel Adams and Subhankar Banerjee). I also find myself wanting to broaden my study – I’m interested in learning more about the greening of religion both in specifics and in general, wanting to read more of the classics of nature writing…

As I said, the exploration continues.

A (food) chain of problems

2009-08-06T14:15:00.000-07:00

In watching an interview with Bill Moyers following the 2008 Presidential election, it was quite apparent that author Michael Pollan feels that the state of the U.S. food industry should be a central focus for President Obama when attempting to create change in our country. This was another reminder for me in how massive this issue of food safety is. While the problems might start at the top, they definitely infiltrate across every mouth in the nation.

Within the brief 20 minute interview, the many issues with food in our country were discussed, proving that the way food is managed by our government and the few major companies involved, affects each and every individual. Because of the decisions being made in agribusiness there are now 32 million Americans who are struggling to put food on their tables. Unfortunately, a lack of food is not the only problem. The decreasing quality of the food we eat is equally detrimental to society.

The sad fact is that although cheap food is readily available in our country, according to Pollan, it is actually extremely expensive. The costs of cheap food include farm subsidies, pollution effects and quality of water, all of which lead to public health consequences of obesity, Type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Pollan includes costs to the atmosphere in this list, deeming agribusiness as the biggest contributor to green house gases. It seems that every way we turn, change is desperately needed.

Through this interview, Pollan urges Obama to look at the problems with the food industry through a global perspective that is interdisciplinary in nature. Without doing so, Pollan believes that he will be missing an opportunity to look at what is possibly the most important question, how do all of these dots connect?

Journey within a Journey

2009-08-04T18:24:00.000-07:00

With kayaks weighed down with 5 weeks of food and gear, 13 of us set off to study ecology and policy of the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska. One of our stops was Anan Bear Observatory operated by the U.S. Forest Service. It is accessible only by boat or float plane and requires very limited, difficult to get permits. The focal point is Anan Creek that supports the largest run of pink salmon in Southeast Alaska. It is estimated that 300,000 fish make their way up the creek to spawn and die from late June through September. And, where salmon are found, so are the bear that feed on them. Black and brown (brownies aka grizzles) in close proximity to each other with cubs, feeding on an endless bounty. This is the vantage of the observatory as we watched quietly with amazement.

The pink salmon that run here are also called Humpbacks or “Humpies” because of the pronounced hump that the males develop on their back after they begin spawning. They can weigh up to 12 pounds but more commonly weigh 3 to 5 pounds at maturity, and their two-year life cycle is the shortest of all the salmon species. Because they return to spawn after approximately 18 months at sea, each year’s pink salmon never mix with another’s, so runs in odd and even numbered years become genetically isolated and radically different in size.

Anan Creek is also an area of rich history. The Stikine Tlingit clans had summer fish camps here and used Anan Creek’s large salmon spawning run to catch and preserve salmon for their winter food supply. Anan was unique because the large amount of salmon available made it possible to have several clans sharing one fish camp.
The abundance of salmon also drew non-native people to Anan Creek. In 1901, Pilot Fish Packing Company set up a large fish trap at Anan that allowed few fish to make it up the creek. This lack of escapement was very destructive to the Anan salmon population. Commercial fish traps were outlawed shortly after Alaska became a state in 1959.

I was conflicted as I intruded into the Anan Creek ecosystem where I as a human, did not participate and only benefited anthropocentrically. However, it was there that I found a greater reverence for wilderness and an obligation to protect it. I had journeyed to Anan to observe the bear and I departed with a greater understanding of the complexity of nature that will always remain with me. Simply put, without salmon there will be no bear. Perhaps this was the inception of my personal responsibility for there to be a future for salmon.

Reflecting on local food

2009-08-04T14:14:00.000-07:00

This class is providing us an exciting opportunity to step blindly into the unknown world of food production. The more we learn the more there is to learn.

We have read about the systemic destruction associated with agribusiness, We have meet and interviewed local farmers, agricultural economist and farmland stewards.

Through these dialogues I am beginning to understand how dire the need to save local organic farmland is. I think what is most important is educating people about where our food comes from, somehow we have begun to take our food for granted, assuming all is well we continue to eat our microwave dinners.

In reading Animal Vegetable, Miracle I am struck by how little I know about gardening. When I was growing up my family had a small vegetable garden we grew the basics, corn, tomatoes, potatoes and peas. It was hard work the soil was clay and full of rocks.

Every spring my sister and I would have the tedious chore of picking out buckets of rocks from the mucky garden that my grandfather would endlessly hoe. My favorite vegetables to forage for were potatoes. I remember the dirt under my fingernails from digging deep down in the cold ground and finally discovering my treasures and yelling “I found them!” Then always making sure that I ate the potatoes I found.

I recently asked my parents why they don’t have a garden in their new house. They laughed, “too much work” they said in unison and “you can get whatever you need at the grocery store”. For them the garden was all part of the rural living experience, my mom is from the Bronx and my dad is from the Jersey Shore. It was my grandparents that were the lifeblood of the garden. They were Irish immigrants and had a deep respect for the land and its ability to provide for its residents.

I worry about the future. My own parents the ones who made me eat my vegetables are content to eat there corn feed beef and South American grown tomatoes.

Although they did enjoy shopping at the Ballard Farmers Market and my dad just saw Food Inc, so there is hope after all.

Food is business.

Food is personal.

Food is necessary.

I can see food clearly now

2009-08-04T11:33:00.000-07:00

The book we have been reading, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, A year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver has been incredibly enjoyable. It is such a wonderful read that I find myself looking forward to each chapter with longing titillation. She beautifully writes about the challenges and gifts of eating locally. Her daughter adds delicious recipes with each chapter and her husband contributes interesting politics and facts. This book has indeed changed the way I see food. I thought I was well informed in this area. Since starting this class I realize it is just the tip of a melting iceberg. They have a lovely website with recipes and more information at http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/.

On July 18th Erin, Sam and I went to the CAGJ's annual fundraiser, Strengthening Local Economies Everywhere Fair & Dinner, http://www.seattleglobaljustice.org/slee-dinner/. We had a great time looking at all the booths and talking to the vendors. Dinner was a local fresh treat. I just got the latest newsletter in my email, which states "The Fair was fun and festive, and the dinner was well-attended. As appetizers were served, CAGJ presented our three programs, and Steve Williamson delivered a compelling keynote pointing to the important challenges of building cross-sectoral unity for food workers' rights. We honored the food workers and farmers eating with us, broke bread together, and sung "Pastures of Plenty" as the delicious and beautiful dinner was served."

We were placed at a table with a few other nice people who we enjoyed meeting, especially Eric from Jubilee Biodynamic Farm, http://www.jubileefarm.org/index.html. He was a philosophy professor before he became a farmer. Talking with him was inspirational for me and I am now compelled to go visit his farm on August 22nd for CAGJ's upcoming Teach Out, http://www.seattleglobaljustice.org/2009/07/join-cagjs-teach-out-sat-aug-22-visit-jubilee-farm-local-roots-farm/. Does anyone want to join me?

The Establishment of the National Park Service

2009-08-03T19:01:00.000-07:00

About thirty years after the historic expedition of Lewis and Clark travelers were exploring the western region of the United States. Most were seeking fur or riches but another traveler, George Catlin had another agenda. Catlin’s focus was on the studies of the native tribes that lived in the region. As Catlin proceeded throughout the Great Plains he was struck by the great beauty of the region. He knew that this area would soon change as the settlers came to claim their stake and felt that it should be safeguarded and preserved. It was George Catlin who in the early 1830’s first presented the idea that America should create “A nation’s park containing man and beast, all in the wild and freshness of their nature’s beauty!”1 At the time no one really gave much thought to Catlin’s idea but finally in 1864 Congress ceded the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree to the state of California protecting it from land claims and logging. Later in 1872 President Grant signed the Yellowstone Park Act reserving more than two million acres from “settlement, occupancy or sale” and reserved it “as a public pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.”2

Even though national parks such as Mount Rainier, Sequoia, and Crater Lake were being established they were still not protected. Advocate, inventor, nature lover and preservationist John Muir saw the need to protect these areas and with others pushed President Woodrow Wilson to sign the National Park Service Act in 1916 creating the National Park Service that we know today. John Muir is often referred to as “the Father of the National Park Service”.

Why were our national parks established and what was the purpose behind the creation of the National Park Service? Before these questions are answered let’s explore the Antiquities Act of 1906. Many areas in the Southwest, especially native ruins, were being looted for treasure. Many saw the need to protect these places and urged Congress to pass the Antiquities Act which allowed the president to set aside these places as “national monuments” and imposed strict penalties for those who looted, disturbed or destroyed prehistoric ruins on federal land. It was this act that allowed President Theodore Roosevelt to create such places as Devils Tower and Montezuma Castle and later President William H. Taft and Woodrow Wilson proclaimed more monuments such as Mt. Olympus and Dinosaur National Monument. The Antiquities Act allowed areas of cultural and historic value to be protected just as the national parks were. Up until this time the areas set aside as parks were areas with exceptional beauty or extraordinary landscape qualities or monumental scenery. Now areas with cultural and historical value were also on the list of areas to preserve and protect. The coordination of efforts to protect these parks and monuments was set in stone, or at least on paper, with the creation of the National Park Service Act in 1916. To this day the mission statement of the National Parks Service has not changed. It states "the Service thus established shall promote and regulate the use of Federal areas known as national parks, monuments and reservations . . . by such means and measures as conform to the fundamental purpose of the said parks, monuments and reservations, which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."3 The rules, policies and agenda were set for the service but providing the funds and manpower to carry it out proved to be a very challenging task.
Even today our national parks are struggling with preserving their resources and keeping up with maintenance within the parks. Policies and procedures that were made over 90 years ago have not changed to adapt to our changing world, a myriad of environmental stresses, and growing visitor use. The management plan for the parks did not take into account these changes and stresses. It is becoming clear that a static management plan cannot be effective in a dynamic environment. It is time to take a closer look at the current management plan for the parks. This does not mean that we must abandon the plan entirely but it does mean that we must develop a plan that is more effective, systemic, and dynamic for our changing world in order to meet the special needs of the preservation of the wild, scenic, historical and cultural treasures that are found in these places. It is this topic that my next post will be dedicated to. Please remember to support your National Parks by visiting them, purchasing an annual pass, and voting for increased funding…and as always please tread lightly in these most special of places.

1 George Catlin, Illustrations of the Manners, Customs and Conditions of the North American Indians, 2 vols. (London: H.G. Bohn, 1851), 1:262.
2 John Ise, Our National Park Policy: A Critical History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press 1961), 53.
3 National Park Service, The National Park System Caring for the American Legacy, www.nps.gov/legacy/mission.html

Photo credits:
National Park Service US Department of Interior Museum Management Program, John Muir, Library of Congress. LC-USZ62-52000 DLC. Digital #cph 3b00011
Wikipedia, George Catlin, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GeorgeCatlinByFisk.jpg

Here Comes the Sun

2009-08-03T11:14:00.000-07:00

Though this summer, as I am told, is uncharacteristically sunny for Seattle, there have been some gray days. After a day or two of the sun hiding behind clouds, it's so dramatic to see how the plants respond when it is shining brightly again. It's as if someone injected them with life power. Leaves are bigger, greener and reaching higher. It seems as if they are trying to prove themselves, “Look, look what I can do!”

Different cultures through history have worshiped the power of the sun or at least celebrated it's movement throughout the year. Equinox and solstice have had powerful meanings across the world, marking the passing of the seasons, something greatly lost in our culture. Since we have been able to remove ourselves from the seasonal rhythms, working and eating the same in winter as we do in summer, the seasonal landmarks have lost their importance.

May Day, the midpoint between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, is often a fertility celebration (i.e. maidens dancing around the May “pole”) in the hopes a full summer bounty. For Beltane, the Celtic May celebration, great fires were built to purify the people, animals and the land. Especially in Eastern Europe, large bonfires were also apart of their summer solstice celebrations. As well as bringing the sun's fire to earth, it was also to ward off any wandering spirits that may damage the coming harvest.

Maureen Gilmer, a horticulturist writing in the Seattle Times, noted that that for the ancients “[p]lants harvested on this day were believed to be imbued with all sorts of special powers. Healers believed that herbs cut on this date would be better able to cure the sick.”
Gilmer wrote that this is likely true as prior to the solstice, many plants concentrate on making roots, shoots and leaves, but afterward with the days getting shorter, they will focus on reproductive growth. The medicinal oils present in certain herbs are more concentrated on solstice has they haven't yet been expended into reproduction.

Reading Rudolph Steiner's lectures on Nature Spirits, he tells how the sun (along with other elements of the sky) send the secrets of the universe into plants and the plants channel those secrets into their roots where root spirits (characterized as Gnomes) gather the secrets and then spread them through the underground as they travel.

When we eat food we eat the elements that brought it to life. The energy of the sun's firelight fuels photosynthesis and the growth of the plant. We eat the plant's response to the Sun's gift. I was taught to say thanks to God whenever I ate a meal, something I do not do enough anymore. Though when I do, I repeat a Buddhist prayer taught to me by a friend I met in Hawaii, “Earth, fire, water, air and space combine to make this food. Numberless beings gave their life and labour that I may eat. May I be nourished, that I may nourish life.”

(Orginally posted on growfoodfeedspirit.blogspot.com)

Insight into the Luiseno Diet

2009-08-02T22:12:00.000-07:00

I have been at Tierra Miguel Farm in Pauma Valley, CA for over a year. Prior to this course, I had learned little about the natural history of the area. But I am using this opportunity to learn about the native foods that have been eaten for centuries and their significance to the native peoples of the region. The property that Tierra Miguel farms is owned by the Pauma Band of Luiseño Indians, one of seven bands of the Luiseno Indians. Before the times when cheap food could be quickly shipped around the world, people of all cultures had to depend upon locally available foodstuffs to make up most of their diet. Below are some traditional foods that the Luiseno have enjoyed since time immemorial.

From the Pauma Band website
( http://www.pauma-nsn.gov/pauma-tribal-culture.html ):

The Luiseño people enjoyed life in a land rich with diverse plants and animals. Our people have been described as hunters and gatherers.

The men hunted deer, antelope, rabbits, wood rats, ducks, quail, seafood and various insects. Hunters used bows and arrows, spear throwers, rabbit sticks, traps, nets, clubs and slings to catch game. Fishermen and traders used dugout canoes in the ocean and tule reed boats or rafts in the rivers and lakes. Family groups had specific hunting and gathering areas in the mountains and along the coast. Individuals from outside these groups only crossed the boundaries of these areas upon permission.

Women gathered seeds, roots, wild berries, acorns, wild grapes, strawberries, wild onions and prickly pear in finely woven baskets. The Pauma and other Luiseño peoples are world renown for their expertise in coiled baskets made from the flora of the region.

At the heart of our traditional foods is wìiwish, a tasty ground acorn mush and healthy food staple rich in protein. Evidence of acorn and seed processing and shellfish use dominates ancient sites throughout the Luiseño territory. The most visible evidence is the bedrock milling stone mortars used for processing seeds like acorns. These bedrock mortars sites are located throughout our region.

The traditional territory of the Luiseño people extends along the coast, from the north near San Juan Capistrano, south to the Encinitas/Carlsbad area and east to the valleys of the coastal mountains and Mt. Palomar. Today this area is in northern San Diego, Riverside and Orange counties.

Tierra Miguel is growing domesticated versions of the following traditional Luiseno foods; roots, wild berries, wild grapes, strawberries, and wild onions. Currently growing at the farm are carrots, beets, radishes, potatoes, grapes, raspberries, strawberries and onions among many other items.

Wiiwish is the Luiseno food that I would most like to taste. My understanding is that it was a staple of their diet. Stay tuned to read about how wiiwish and other traditional food continue to be part of the Luiseno diet.

Restructure our Structure

2009-08-01T19:49:00.000-07:00

Change doesn’t come easy. I am starting to have a better understanding of this mantra as I look back on the historic efforts to preserve the salmon and their habitat. As the salmon population continues to decline and the environmental problems become seemingly more insurmountable, I am challenged by this track record.

This past week I have been brainstorming ways to engage various stakeholders, especially community members to create a more comprehensive and collaborative salmon recovery strategy. Through this process, it has occurred to me that our voices are mainly heard through agencies and organizations. Think about it, if you were interested in becoming involved or even voicing your opinion about something in which you feel passionately, you would either find a local organization to give money or volunteer time, contact a governmental agency to explain your position, or start your own movement. But what if you lived in area where such organization don’t exist, or time and money is not something you have to give, or you lack the resources to start your own organization? In fact, what if you don’t even have easy access to the internet to seek further information? Often these people are left behind and their voices and opinions are neglected.

Furthermore, organizations can often burn through volunteers because they are set up in a way that provides little to no return on investments made. Many organizations have agendas that shape the development of projects and the role of the volunteer then, most likely, becomes the implementation of such projects. Unless they are on the Board of Directors or the steering committee, volunteers have little to no say in the developmental process. It seems that some organizations, while trying to serve from the bottom up still employ the top down strategy.

Unfortunately time is becoming an increasingly important factor in solving our environmental problems, yet our ways of creating change seem slow and antiquated. Are we being constrained by our existing models of collaboration? Are our organizational models even set up to effectively serve all constituents? I think it is time to challenge our rules of engagement and our methods of organization to finds ways we can mobilize people faster, more efficiently, farther reaching, and on a broader more inclusive level.

Further Exploration of the Religious History of Germany

2009-08-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

While I had set up prompt questions for my blog posts, I am going to continue to ignore them in order to delve into thoughts that have arisen during my readings.

I am in the middle of reading The Germanization of Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation by James C. Russell. As the name indicates, this reads somewhat like a thesis, but since the subject interests me immensely, it’s a quick and easy read. Before this study began, I initial thought that Christianity came into the Germanic world much like how modern day missionaries create converts, by taking all that they deem sacred and telling them its wrong and showing them that Christ’s path is the only path. Albeit simplified, this is the overarching story that is told about missionaries going into remote locations in Africa and South America and I assumed that such practices began hundreds of years ago.

As is often the case, my oversimplified assumptions were proven wrong and I am glad for it. First of Russell tells us, as his book’s title suggests, is that it wasn’t so much that the Germanic peoples were Christianized as much as Christianity was Germanized. “This process of accommodation resulted in the essential transformation of Christianity from a universal salvation religion to a Germanic, and eventually European, folk religion.” (Russell, 39) In essence, the missionaries allowed for a certain amount of melding of the traditional folk, or pagan, religion with Christianity in order to have converts. Second, the author goes on to describe how current Christianity is in fact a Germanized version of the original religion. In fact, Russell asserts, “were it not for its Germanization, Christianity might never have spread throughout Northern and Central Europe.” (Russell, 40) By allowing the Germanic peoples to take differing parts of the old and new religious ideas, missionaries were able to make Christianity “stick” and eventually spread throughout Europe. Fascinating!

What does this have to do with food, you might ask? Well, my original hypothesis was that the Germanic peoples’ relationship with food was changed by the influence of Christianity. However, in reading this book, I realize that it may be the other way around. This would explain how modern German relationship with food does not seem significantly different than during more agrarian times. Stay tuned for more insight!

P.S.
An interesting blog: http://parablesblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/cup-of-christ.html

DRCC River festival interviews - photos!

2009-07-30T13:26:00.000-07:00

I tried adding photos to my post from a couple of the programs that I connected to without success, so here they are: the photo on the left is from Erin Evetts, outreach coordinator of the Manufacturing Industrial Council. The two photos on the right are from the work readiness program at the Georgetown campus of South Seattle Community College.

DRCC River festival interviews

2009-07-30T13:08:00.000-07:00

I have interviewed eight people so far, seven of them via phone, the eighth responded to the interview questions I posted here via e-mail. The organizations that I have talked to people about include the Georgetown campus of South Seattle Community College, Seattle Parks and Recreation, the metro YMCA, the Seattle Maritime Academy, Got Green and Puget Sound Sage. Most of these organizations have some type of internship program designed to provide education and awareness about livable wage jobs and careers for youth between 15 to 20 years who are from "disadvantaged" backgrounds. These programs focus on helping their students learn about many occupations that we tend to look down on, including construction, urban reforestation, health care and technology. I focused my interview questions with interviewees about the programs that these organizations have that provide some environmental education to youth along with raising their awareness of the new field of "green" jobs.

The responses that I got to my questions varied, especially when it came to discussing "green" jobs, and whether or not the organization considers that its program does have connections to the EPA superfund cleanup of the Duwamish river. Michael Woo, the founder of "Got Green", a new organization dedicated to working with youth from disadvantaged diverse communities, talked about "green" jobs from an organizing perspective. He stated that we shouldn't wait for anyone else to define what "green" jobs should be, communities of color need to define what we see as opportunities and to actively create them. His view contrasts to Melinda Nichols' perspective of working in job readiness programs. Melinda is skeptical about "green" jobs and feels that not everyone will have the "glamorous" ones that the media talks about such as working on solar panels. Given what I know about their backgrounds Melinda works for a government bureaucracy while Michael Woo speaks as a former community organizer and construction worker.

Holy Ground

2009-07-27T11:27:00.000-07:00

I am tempted in every blog entry to formulate some kind of spiritual gardening doctrine and declare it like the sermon on the mount. But the fact is, as you will see below, much of what I'm learning are snippets, little bits of truth here and there that don't have a collective form that I can present to you. Walk with me, like in a garden and take in the beauty and variety that can be found.

My initial spiritual experiences with soil was through the Christian creation story- “...the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life...” (Genesis 2:7). The existential Ecclesiastes also refers back to man's beginning in the famous “dust to dust” verse: “...'As for men, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Man's fate is like that of animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of animal goes down into earth?'” ( Ecc. 3:18-21)
(Side note: In an effort not to pull a verse out it's context as is so often done with the bible, I intentionally included the whole paragraph and was surprised by what else was said in the verse. I have no memory of these parts, though I've read this book countless times.)

Sitting next to my garden, I was ruminating on the chalice symbol representing the womb of the Mother Goddess. It suddenly became very apparent to me that soil in which the plants sat was the body of the Earth. She lay on her back, the shape of the garden her belly, the soil her flesh, the organisms her cells, and the water saturated in it her blood.

I have been reading about nature spirits and their different manifestations, trying to understand their role in the food garden. In my ancestral tradition, Gaels and Celts, the nature spirit were held in great reverence. Gnomes are known as the personification of the soil spirits, the beings that aid plants in their birth and growth. Last week I spoke to a clairvoyant who explained to me that nature spirits are like nitrogen fixers, except that they fix energy. As he explained it the nature spirits' role is to take the world's energy and fix it in a way the plant can use. When I speak to my plants, sending it generous and loving energy, it is the nature spirits who take this energy and feed it to the plant.

I've known people who are quite offended when one refers to soil as “dirt.” To them, dirt is well, a dirty word. It implies that soil is worthless and lifeless which couldn't be further from the truth. For these people (and I think I'm one of them) soil is a miracle. It is miraculous how unclean and unwanted things like shit and rotting matter, can be turned into something that gives so much life. For us, soil makes every inch of the earth holy ground.

(Originally posted at growfoodfeedspirit.blogspot.com).

Laying the Foundations

2009-07-26T18:21:00.000-07:00

I have spent the past week learning about the creation of the National Park Service (NPS) and the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). I have also been learning a lot about the structure of the NPS, how it allocates its funds, where most of the money goes, and as a result, what problems arise due to the current structure although this will come in a future post. Granted this is not as exciting as getting to talk about some of my favorite parks and show pretty pictures from my hikes, but it is quite important to understand the inner workings of the NPS to better understand what changes need to be made in order to create a sound, stable platform from which they can operate and function now and the future.

In 1864 congress ceded the Yosemite Valley to the state of California to be protected “inalienable for all time.” (Miles, 4) This action was spurred by George Catlin who fell in love with the West and recognized that as more settlers like him came into this new area the entire scene would change. While most settlers saw the West as a land of endless resources and opportunities, Catin saw it as a magnificent landscape that needed protection if it was to endure. This idea ultimately became the basis for the creation of the first national park. Yellowstone National Park was created in 1872 by Ulysses S. Grant. Unlike Yosemite, Yellowstone was to be administered by the federal government rather than by a state. Right away administration became a problem for the new park and ultimately congress appointed the U.S. Army as its protector. Yellowstone did not even have legislation protecting wildlife until 1894, more than ten years after it became a park. The stage was set for a myriad of problems that would plague the parks then and now: “incompetent and political concessions (private entrepreneurs providing services to visitors for a fee); threats of inappropriate development; boundaries inadequate to protect resources, especially wildlife; and an inadequate budget to the job mandated by the act creating the park.” (Miles, 6) A short time later Sequoia, Mount Rainier, and Crater Lake National Parks were founded by congress, however there were no funds to manage or protect them and once again the military moved in to do what they could. It was clear that the designation of boundaries was not enough and as John Muir and the Sierra Club were quickly finding out, there were lots of opportunities and work for citizens interested in supporting the national parks. These parks were all clearly appropriate examples of magnificent national parks, but in the early 1900’s the creation of three new national parks raised issues with many park advocates. The creation of Wind Cave, Sullys Hill and Platt became the butt of jokes in congress. For example, Platt National Park was created to honor a deceased senator from Connecticut and its main feature was a group of springs, however these springs were polluted by runoff from an inadequate sewage system in a nearby town. It was becoming evident that there was a need for the establishment of some sort of criteria for what should or shouldn’t be a national park as well as the development of a systemic, comprehensive management plan to protect them.

After the civil war Americans were becoming more concerned about the destruction and degradation of natural beauty and wildlife and the conservation movement began. The conservation movement divided into two branches early on. The conservation branch, led by Gifford Pinchot, felt that resources should be used, consumed and sometimes depleted. The preservation branch, led by John Muir, felt that resources should be protected and not depleted and that some resources should simply be left alone and in the case of the national parks they should be preserved. Many organizations, such as the Sierra Club, the National Audubon Society, the Mountaineers and the American Civic Association were founded with conservation and resource protection in mind. The United States Forest Service was established in 1906 under the leadership of Pinchot who was a true conservationist at heart. J. Horace McFarland, a leader of the American Civic Association and a preservationist, envisioned a similar bureau that would unify the management of the national parks. McFarland allied himself with Muir to oppose San Francisco’s proposal to build a dam that would flood the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite and as a result became a major advocate of the national parks. The battle over Hetch Hetchy and the conflicting views of preservation and conservation illustrated the need for a centralized administrative system for the national parks. In the early 1900’s McFarland and the American Civic Association along with his alliances with the Sierra Club, the Appalachian Mountain Club, Society for the Preservation of National Parks, and John Muir pushed for a national park bureau or service.

In 1910 Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger asked McFarland to confer with him about the creation of a national park bureau. Ballinger’s successors Walter Fisher and Franklin Lane continued to support Ballinger’s proposal. Amongst severe opposition McFarland and his allies pursued their campaign and in 1912 President Taft urged congress to create such a bureau. Pinchot and the Forest Service adamantly opposed such a bureau believing that the Forest Service should have control over the national parks and their resources. While McFarland and his allies set about pushing the creation of the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior was trying to work on some sort of coordination for the parks. Secretary of the Interior, Franklin Lane, brought Adolph Miller on board as an assistant and gave him the responsibility of unifying the administration of the parks. Miller recruited Horace Albright as his assistant and was soon introduced to Steven Mather. Together with McFarland and his allies they pushed for the signing of the National Parks Service Act and on August 25, 1916 against powerful opposition President Wilson signed the National Park Service Act and the National Park Service was created.

The creation of the National Parks Service was a monumental accomplishment, yet there was still more work to be done. In 1917 Mather decided to hold a national conference aimed at getting congress to appropriate support for the development of the parks. Mather underwent a great deal of stress advocating for the parks and during this conference had a nervous breakdown. Many felt that Robert Sterling Yard was the logical choice for Mather’s replacement but the young ambitious Albright would take Mather’s place until he could return. Albright was named “acting director” of the NPS until Mather’s return and Yard was appointed as chief of the Educational Division even though there was no official appropriation for that division. Yard’s salary was paid out of Mather’s own pocket! Yard saw the need to increase interest in education of the national parks and promoted them through articles and other publications. What Yard found was little interest in public education of the parks which ultimately led him to create an organization outside of the government. He gained support for his idea from scientist and secretary of the Smithsonian Charles Walcott as well as Henry Macfarland and together they began the formation of the National Parks Educational Committee. In the next two years they would gain support and in 1919 the committee had 72 members. They felt they could create a partnership with the NPS by letting the NPS develop and administer the parks while they provided public education of the parks. In 1919 the Educational Committee proposed their idea of the creation of the National Parks Association with Mather. Mather wholeheartedly agreed that such an organization would benefit the NPS and urged its creation at once and pledged $5000 to help it get running. Yard and Macfarland worked tirelessly to create the National Parks Association and on April 9, 1919 scheduled a meeting in Washington DC to discuss its creation. The response was positive and on May 19, 1919 the National Parks Association was created.

What was the responsibility of this new organization? Yard, Mather, Macfarland and many others knew that the NPS needed more funding and thought that their priorities might not be entirely correct. The NPA created a document that set the agenda and objectives for the organization which is prefaced with this:

As Congress conceives the National Parks only as concrete properties and appropriates only for their physical protection, improvement and maintenance, there is no governmental provision for their study from any other point of view, or for their interpretation, or for preparing the public mind for their higher enjoyment. To accomplish these objects is the fundamental purpose of the National Parks Association. (Miles 24, 25)

The National Parks Association also created four objectives. The first was “To interpret and popularize natural science by using the conspicuous scenery and the plant and animal exhibits of the national parks, now prominent in the public eye, for examples.” The second stated “To help the development of the national parks into a complete and rational system.” The third objective was to “thoroughly study the National Parks and make past as well as future results available for public use.” The final objective was “To encourage travel in every practicable way.” The NPA wanted to attract people to the parks, yet they also realized the need for education and the sharing of information as well as resource protection. They saw themselves as the defenders of the National Parks and realized that public education is essential to public support.

I have long been a fan of the National Parks Conservation Association (they added the word conservation in the 70’s when the environmental movement emerged), but until recently I never knew their origin. I have also known that the NPS and the NPCA frequently butt heads on issues regarding the parks. Now I feel I have a much clearer vision of why the NPCA was created in the first place and I am glad they are still there advocating for my favorite places. There is still much to be done but I am hopeful that it can and will happen. I feel that their mission to educate the public about our national parks is vital to their public support. Please vote for increased funding for our national parks and support them by visiting them taking only pictures and leaving only footprints on the trails of course.

Works Cited
Miles, John C. Guardians of the parks a history of the National Parks and Conservation Association. Washington, D.C: Taylor & Francis in cooperation with National Parks and Conservations Association, 1995. Print.

What’s Organic about Organic?

2009-07-26T09:29:00.000-07:00

Something for the food folk to watch.

Thresholds and Vows

2009-07-23T20:20:00.000-07:00

All the true vows 
are secret vows
 the ones we speak out loud
 are the ones we break.

  There is only one life
 you can call your own
 and a thousand others
 you can call by any name you want.

  Hold to the truth you make
 every day with your own body,
 don't turn your face away.

  Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
 you were born with.

  Those who do not understand 
their destiny will never understand
 the friends they have made
 nor the work they have chosen

nor the one life that waits
 beyond all the others.  

By the lake in the wood 
in the shadows
 you can
 whisper that truth
 to the quiet reflection 
you see in the water.

  Whatever you hear from 
the water, remember,  

it wants you to carry
 the sound of its truth on your lips.

  Remember, 

in this place
 no one can hear you

  and out of the silence
 you can make a promise 
it will kill you to break,

that way you'll find
 what is real and what is not.

  I know what I am saying. 
Time almost forsook me
 and I looked again.

  Seeing my reflection
 I broke a promise
 and spoke
 for the first time 
after all these years

  in my own voice,

  before it was too late 
to turn my face again.

- David Whyte, "All the True Vows"    

David Whyte’s words were some of the first uttered by Bill Plotkin as he introduced us to his weekend intensive entitled: Cultivating Visionary Leadership and Soul-Infused Artistry in a Time of Global Change. Little did I know or understand at the time (as is always the case, right?) that these words, my whispers, my promises and my reflections would present me with a threshold, that once crossed would mean no turning back.

Bill believes that there are eight levels of personal / soul development (more on that later). He also believes that 75% of Western individuals have become perpetually stuck in their adolescent phase. By no means should you confuse the adolescent psychological phase with that of the physical sort. Yes, they can occur in tandem but physical growth during the adolescent period is more of a natural occurrence and passes with the awkwardness and humility that most of us are familiar with. The psychological aspect of this phase, however, is deeply personal and cultural. Unfortunately for most Westerners and an ever growing contingent of the non-Western world, our market driven constitutional delusions of individuality and isolation are at the heart of our problems culturally and collectively. Bill believes, as do I, that our collective problems stem from our deep seeded individuality and our lack of developing to our full human potential. He pushes further by stating that, “A truly initiated adult knows their place in the world.” Do you know your place in the world? Do I?

Over the next day Bill introduced us to several techniques he uses to check the ego to allow an individual to transcend into a more soulful level of consciousness. We integrated music, art, story, naming (psychological birth), dream work, and wilderness excursions into our day. My most significant learning came from our wilderness excursions. We were given the idea of finding a physical threshold whether it be a stick, log, fence, curb, etc. and cross it knowing that we were attempting to transcend the realities of the ‘real world’ by entering the world of the soul, the underworld. Walking alone in a state park I selected my threshold, crossed it and found a tree willing to listen to my silent truths. As I emerged from my conversation / meditation and stepped over the threshold between the worlds of the soul and reality, I knew something was different. I can’t put into words how I knew, nor do I want to, but I just felt it.

One of the last things I wrote down from that day was something Bill said, “Embodying our own personal mystery is the best action (and perhaps most creative?) we have to create social and cultural change.” Fast forward to now, almost three weeks since my weekend intensive and I’ve mutually ended a five and a half year relationship and reconnected with myself, with my soul. My former partner and I have our own and shared reasons for ending our intimate relationship but undoubtedly, for me, Bill’s work influenced this life event as did the conversations I’ve had recently, some of the realizations I’ve made during my time at Antioch and my own soul screaming for release, for freedom. I’m now staring into a future full of potential, mystery, adventure and unknowing... and I like it.

Food is Culture

2009-07-23T15:15:00.000-07:00

My introductory readings for this personal study were chosen to supply me with a historical baseline from where to proceed. Those readings are “Food is Culture” by Massimo Montanari, “Indians of the Oaks” by Melicent Lee and a short essay by Margaret Mead, “The Problem with Changing Diets.”

If “Food is Culture,” then what is culture? Montanari has a reply: “What we call culture takes it place where tradition and innovation intersect. Tradition is made up of knowledge, techniques, values, which were handed down to us. Innovation exists insomuch as this knowledge, these techniques, these values modify the place of man in the environmental context, rendering him able to experience a new reality (Montanari 7).”

This book is a short, fantastic piece that immediately set me back on my heels, forcing me to reevaluate assumptions that I held as I approached this course. I had hoped to learn about the diets of the peasantry, who would have made do with only locally available foodstuffs as opposed to the higher classes who could afford the high price of imported goods from traders. But what can I learn if no account has been made.

Because the lower classes did not commit their own experiences to writing but relied on oral transmission, they have seemingly left us nothing (Montanari 36). Theoretically speaking, orally transmitted cooking is destined not to leave traces of itself over time (Montanari 35).

Additionally, I expected that this course would solidify my belief that the introduction of new foods into traditional diets was mostly harmful. Montanari has challenged that belief.

The food system is therefore an extraordinary vehicle of self-representation and of cultural exchange. Food can serve as a mediator between different cultures, opening methods of cooking to all manner of invention, cross-pollination, and contamination (Montanari 133). Every culture, every tradition, every identity is a dynamic, unstable product of history, one born of complex phenomena of exchange, interaction, and contamination. Food cultures are so much richer and more interesting when the encounters and exchanges have been lively and frequent (139).

The writing of Melicent Lee did not disappoint either. “Indians of the Oaks” is a fictional story based upon the author’s time spent with members of the Kumeyaay Indians of present day Southern CA and Northern Mexico. I learned a great deal about the foods eaten by the Indians as well as the rituals that were equally important aspects of those meals. I look forward to my interview with a young tribal member of a Kumeyaay band to learn about his diet and his attempts to retain his food heritage.

Mead’s 20-page piece was a technical look into the physiological arguments of why retaining one’s traditional diet is most efficient. It was chock full of technicism and read longer than the immaculate 140 pages of Montanari. In retrospect, I would have chosen an alternative reading to begin the course as I do not feel that the essay delivered what it’s title evoked. I was relying on the author to reinforce my belief that Montanari had challenged and came away quite disappointed. As the old saying goes, don’t judge a book by its cover, or in this case, an essay by its title.

An eye-opening and mouth watering inquiry

2009-07-23T12:49:00.000-07:00

As we embark on our summer of studying the local food movement in Seattle, I have become more conscious of the role that food has in my life. Besides the basic nourishment factor, my life truly does revolve around food. Growing up and still today, my family plans their days, especially holidays, around what we are going to eat together. Every Sunday my parents spend the entire day cooking spaghetti sauce on a brick on their stove and on special occasions, such as every Christmas Eve dinner, they accompany the sauce with homemade raviolis. Each year before the holiday season, I start to dream of ravioli and when the day arrives to start the dough and meat rolling process, I finally feel that twinge of holiday spirit.

As I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, I am recognizing how even though food has always been a central part of my life, it has been there in a somewhat superficial or incomplete manner. I have never been aware, or actually really thought about, where my food was coming from. Although the food we ate was bought from the grocery store chain around the corner, I was always under the impression that what we ate as a family was healthy and even, “pure” because the meals were homemade instead of a frozen meal from Market Day. Because cooking is a large part of my family’s culture, the act of being together while you create a meal was what always stuck out as important but the rest of the story went untold.

In reading this book which accounts for a year in the lives of a family who vows to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves or learn to live without it, my notions of the sanctity of food and the connections it can build between family and community are being transformed. The act of cooking is without a doubt significant to the author’s family and their local food journey, but it is taken to a new level since there is a story, and even a relationship, between the family and each and every tomato chopped, egg boiled and Thanksgiving turkey carved. Through this inquiry project, I am coming to learn quickly that I have been missing the most important chunk of the story of food and it feels embarrassing, intriguing and overwhelming. I’m watching myself read each chapter of this book with increased admiration to the farmers whose livelihood it is to keep us fed and a new found concern as to what corporations are controlling one of our most basic human needs.

Connections: the Duwamish and traditional food

2009-07-23T09:50:00.000-07:00

In reading Dan Klempner's thesis about the history of the Duwamish tribe, I see several connections to what several others in this course are studying. The overall focus of his thesis is the history of how the Duwamish tribe was marginalized by the numerous efforts of settlers to reconstruct what we now know as "Seattle". His thesis also looks at the current efforts by the EPA to conduct a superfund cleanup of the Duwamish river waterway and asks if this cleanup can be conducted without further marginalizing the Duwamish tribe.

Dan writes about the struggles of the Duwamish tribe to regain and/or hold onto their cultural identity over the past decades. As the Duwamish have been pushed out of their traditional lands in this area they have often focused on enforcement of their fishing rights as stated in major treaties such as the Elliott Point one. James Rasmussen, co-chair of the Duwamish tribe told him that this narrow focus on fishing rights as part of their cultural identity leaves them vulnerable on many levels. One example is around the whole debate about what fish are safe to catch and eat from the Duwamish river. The tribe is constantly told that they shouldn't really catch and consume a lot of fish from the river due to the high levels of toxins including PCBs in the fish. Yet fish is so central to the traditional diets of the Duwamish. So as I read his comments I'm thinking of Jonathan's examination of traditional diets of several cultural groups in San Diego, and Jo's examination of salmon habitat restoration too.

I also really appreciate Dan's questioning about whether the ongoing superfund cleanup can be conducted without further marginalizing the Duwamish. This question could also be applied to other groups of people who use the Duwamish river and are marginalized groups. He interviewed several homeless people who live along the Duwamish river and they told him that they would like to have restrooms and facilities where they can shower and do laundry. Previous restrooms were taken away with the justification that having them just means that homeless folks would trash them and conduct illegal activities in them. From the perspective of the homeless people whom Dan talked to, having such facilities helps them maintain their own dignity. Plus, from my own experience of working with homeless families I know that having such facilities makes it more possible for people to maintain themselves and live - whether that's going to work, school, job training or whatever else people can do to get back on their feet.

Joyce

What are "Green Jobs"?

2009-07-22T12:26:00.000-07:00

As part of my continuing outreach for DRCC's upcoming River festival, I talked with Melinda Nichols yesterday. Melinda works for Seattle Parks and Recreation in a summer youth employment program which educates youth ages 15 to 24 about urban forestry and related areas. She stated that no one knows what "green jobs" really are, but her students ask her "where's my Green job?". She said that the concept of "green jobs" is difficult because it isn't "real". She said that a first question to consider with respect to creating future "green jobs" is to ask "How can existing jobs be made greener?"

Her comments help me to remember all the many ways companies are trying to become more environmentally conscious and implement sustainable "green" practices that I learned about in Eco-sustainability last year. How can companies change their manufacturing processes so that they eliminate waste, and recycle everything they use? How can companies do the same in providing services to customers and clients?

Melinda also commented that forests in the Seattle area have been decimated by invasive foreign plants including ivy, laurel and blackberries. She said that in order to restore urban forests you can't just remove invasive plants and plant new ones. It's a process of adding back to nature, by adding in native plants and shrubs carefully. Her program gets 70,000 hours annually of volunteer time from volunteers. She also stated that the overall focus of her program is to "elevate their understanding of the world they live in, that this is their world". So part of their environmental education is to go on boat tours such as the DRCC tour of the Duwamish, and the tours by Seattle Pacific University of the Cedar River watershed. In addition her program tries to show its participants that they do have options for livable wage jobs in fields such as urban forestry, GPS, landscaping and construction.

Joyce

An Introduction

2009-07-21T15:10:00.000-07:00

Have you ever sat on the edge of Crater Lake National Park in awe and admiration contemplating the vibrant blue of the water and wondered if all water should look this way, so clean and uncontaminated? Have you ever had the chance to visit the Natural Bridges National Monument, one of the least light polluted places in the country and sit in jaw dropping fascination as you gaze at the galaxy and marvel at the endless dance of shooting stars streaking across the night sky as coyotes serenade you? Have you ever hiked the Virgin River in Zion National Park leaving all the visitors behind to be greeted by the warm sun, narrowing canyon walls and the welcoming coolness of the river when your only companions are the ravens overhead? Have you felt the rush of solitude and eerie feeling of complete stillness while descending down into the lava tubes in Lava Beds National Monument with only your flashlight for comfort and company?
Why is it important to preserve these places? What makes them so special? I think it would be safe to say that anyone who has ever visited a national park has had some feeling of appreciation and sense of the grandeur and unspoiled beauty all around them. These are the places where it seems that time stands still, the land and animals seem free of human development and encroachment. They are the places that are still wild and free, that may look very similar to the way they did hundreds of years ago, especially if one ventures into the backcountry. Millions of people from all over the world visit the national parks every year for reasons that cannot be found anywhere else but in the parks. Our parks are abounding with a multitude of cultural, historical, biological, ecological, educational, recreational and inspirational experiences for all to enjoy. They are the last of the unspoiled places in the United States. They are home to some of the most diverse and rare species on the planet. They are wild and untamed. They are my passion, my love, my salvation, my inspiration, and my peace.

But who am I? My name is Laura and I am a student, an apartment manager, a hiker, a skier, a climber, a kayaker, and a nature lover. I am one person who cares about our country’s national parks. I have worked in two national parks and they allowed me to live and work in some of the most beautiful places in our country and to get to know the intricacies and connectedness that our parks share with the rest of our world. Most of my vacations or extended road trips will include destinations to the national parks for hiking, enlightenment, inspiration and enjoyment. I recently took a 4000 mile trip to Glacier, Yellowstone, Arches, Canyonlands, Natural Bridges, Lava Beds and Crater Lake. Along the way I informally interviewed park personnel and asked many questions about climate change and its effects on the parks. Initially I got a lot of canned responses, very official and government like, referring me to park web sites and other links to their research and studies. Eventually I learned to ask the right questions. It was amazing and inspiring to see the eyes of the ranger at the visitors center light up once I asked about more than the usual questions of “What is good to see in the park?” and “How long does it take to drive through to see it all?” What I found were park service employees who were lively and passionate about their parks. They were willing to talk at length about the effects of climate change within the park and how it is affecting the fragile ecosystem. For instance, Skull Cave in Lava Beds National Monument is a short walk through a lava tube that culminates in very steep staircases leading you down into the earth to reach the bottom of the cave where ice is on the ground year round. The ice floor used to be open to visitors so they could stand on the ice in freezing temperatures when they came from above 90 degrees just moments ago. Years of visitors carrying dirt and sediment on their shoes has degraded the clarity of the ice and has consequently caused its depletion. Increasing average global temperatures has also lead to the depletion of the ice in Skull Cave, just one small example of the changes our national parks are facing with regards to climate change. Likewise at Glacier National Park in Montana, many of the glaciers are but a fraction of what they were just 50 years ago. Perhaps this park will need to be renamed in the near future. In short many of the reasons we initially preserved these places as national parks or monuments are because of the unique qualities found only in that specific ecosystem. Climate change has begun to affect the very reasons why we set aside these places as pristine or unique. If these unique qualities cease to exist and our parks change beyond recognition will we still value them? What if there were no more glaciers in Glacier NP? What if the bison were gone from Yellowstone and Old Faithful never erupted again? How would we feel if we could never again see the azure of the water at Crater Lake? I feel it is vitally important to understand and study the effects of climate change on our parks in hopes to help them defend themselves from this change. If unchecked, unstudied, and not understood, the parks are susceptible to species extinction, resource depletion, pollution, and catastrophic disease and insect infestation. I deeply believe that we can make a difference. I am only one person passionate about something, yet that is where change begins. Caring individually is a wonderful thing, but collectively caring about something is where social change blossoms and prospers. America’s Best Idea needs your help. Please support your National Parks by visiting them and voting for increased funding. Your children and I will thank you.

Food Justice

2009-07-21T11:02:00.001-07:00

In response to Britt's comment about uploading videos, I want to share one that I think is phenomenal! Unfortunately, I can only give you the link to the website, http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/watch/goodfood/food_justice_a_growing_movement.

Media That Matters hosts a film festival and all the videos are archived on their site. I encourage everyone to explore all the interesting and inspiring films available!!

Thanks,

s.

2009-07-20T20:43:00.000-07:00

If you would have told me that I would be spending time in graduate school investigating how to connect people interested in salmon recovery through internet tools like Twitter and blogging, I would have turned my nose up at you. In fact, I couldn’t even figure out how to post to this blog until today. You might be thinking that things aren’t really looking good for me considering I don’t even have a Facebook account and this is my first blog entry EVER (note the year). But alas, here I am wondering how to share information, tools, and ideas across regions, groups and cultures in order to build more a collaborative and cohesive strategy to restore wild salmon.

Needless to say, this seems like a daunting task and I am often wondering if it is even possible to bring such diverse interest groups together through something as abstract as the internet. This is definitely the road less traveled. However, the more I talk about it with people, the more momentum the idea gains and the more connections I make. Two months ago, I crossed paths with a woman who implements Kitsap County’s salmon restoration program and is a strong champion for strengthening the dialogue among salmon recovery participants. Just yesterday I was talking with one of the regulars at the coffee shop in which I work. She has been coming in before I started working there nine months ago, but never had I known what she did for a living. Turns out she works with social media to bring together communities around ideas or businesses and is interested in helping me get started using WordPress, anyone familiar?

So the lesson this week is a reiteration of the importance of community, whether it is on the internet or in the corner coffee shop. Often our best resources are right in front of us. I find comfort in the thought that even if my idea for an online dialogue centered on salmon restoration flops, I have built invaluable relationships with people I may never have otherwise.

More on the history of salmon restoration next time…

Are Traditional Diets Important?

2009-07-20T14:09:00.000-07:00

Traditional diets connect people to their cultural history, but more significantly than that, peoples have co-evolved with food. The co-evolution of peoples with their place-specific diets has allowed the consumers to efficiently assimilate into themselves the necessary nutrients from regionally available foodstuffs. Changes in diet have consistently occurred over time, though on a gradual basis, in tune with the migration of people. New food items are introduced into diets by traders and travelers and if accepted have been cultivated when possible. Subsequent generations of the introduced crop become adapted to the region as well as to the people who inhabit it.

For those groups whose diets evolved more rapidly than the consumers, re-establishing a connection to the diet that they evolved with would contribute to the reduction in diet-related disease. Additionally a reconnection could act as a vector through which an increased connection to ones cultural history could be achieved. America has become so proficient at exporting its diet to the world, it has become desired globally. Now the foodstuffs alone do not suffice, the ideology is desired and has begun to permeate the belief systems of other regions as well. The efficiency of globalism in making the foodstuffs themselves and the ideology behind their production widely available has allowed for their adoption more rapidly than the novel consumers can evolve to efficiently utilize thus leading to disease in the forms of diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

Peoples that have immigrated to different global regions may not be able to maintain their traditional diet due lack of availability but their past could inform new food choices. There are several traditional meals that I can recall eating regularly as I grew up, none of which I consume any longer. The most immediate impact I may have on promoting other people to readopt their traditional diet, or a variance of it, would be to do so myself. By replicating traditional meals and the experience surrounding it; the gathering, preparing and eating of the food with others, I may prompt others to do the same.

Muddling Through

2009-07-20T10:07:00.000-07:00

These first few weeks will involve lots of reading on the history of Germanic tribes and researching what historians know about them and their culture. The first book I'm reading is called Before France and Germany by Patrick J. Geary and is a great preliminary read. One of the things that I've noted so far is the fact that the "Barbarians", as the Romans called them, did not have written history but relied on oral traditions. While this is not surprising, it proves to be difficult in truly understanding the Germanic culture before becoming "civilized". Geary points out that “when historians attempt to understand the barbarian world of late antiquity they must invariably turn to the written sources of their civilized neighbors, the Greeks and Romans…however…in describing the barbarian world, ancient ethnographers and historians had their own purposes and followed their own conventions that had little to do with what might today be called descriptive ethnography.” (39) The author goes on to describe how the Greeks and Romans saw the barbarians through a certain lens and often did not understand or misinterpreted their actions. Like a game of telephone spanning several centuries, there are invariably misprints and falsehoods that we have to muddle through to find understanding.

In reading this I feel thrown back to first quarter, talking about our mental models. How can we understand a people through the mental model of another, foreign culture? Is it even possible? Even if not, some of the descriptions the Romans gave are in the least entertaining: “They are generally tall, blond, and foul-smelling; they lived not according to fixed, written laws but according to senseless and unpredictable customs. They are fierce and dangerous in war, but slothful, easily distracted, and quarrelsome in peace.” (41) But I wonder, what is really going on here? If this description is accurate and I were to think of how this relates to German culture today, I would say that they are enjoying life. While modern Germans have a reputation for being hard workers, they also enjoy afternoon naps followed by coffee and cake and lively banter on the state of the world. I find it interested (though not surprising) that cultural misunderstandings have not gotten better over time. This churns my mind even further to think about cultural misunderstandings in my own life, specifically in Houston and the large Hispanic population. General stereotypes about all “Mexicans” abound in Southeast Texas because of cultural misunderstandings. But, I digress… the wheels are turning and its sure to be an interesting ride…

Food/Culture Group Guidelines

2009-07-20T10:02:00.000-07:00

Group Members: Anise, Jonathan, & Stephanie

Blogging: Anise and Jonathan have separate blogs but will re-post those on the Coll. Methods blog so that we can all collaborate on the same forum. We will each post once a week and respond to each others' posts.

Meetings: Since we are all basing our studies on food, we'll meet once a month in a potluck or collaborative cooking setting while discussing our findings and further exploring our studies. For the final food/harvest ceremony Jonathan and Stephanie will aid Anise in leading the group.

Ecology: A New Story

2009-07-19T20:54:00.000-07:00

I've posted about a talk I attended by Brian Swimme over on my blog. An excerpt:

Swimme opened by letting us know that he has been influenced by his mentor, Thomas Berry. Berry’s message that the environmental destruction around is happening because we have forgotten the sacred dimension of nature was a key part of the talk. Swimme, as a scientist, has explored how science has contributed to this forgetting. Rooted in 18th century thought, science sees the universe as a machine, and its parts as lifeless (mechanism). Religion was also affected by this form of thought, forgetting the presence of the divine throughout the natural world.

Swimme called this a tragedy, and I would certainly agree. “If the universe is just stuff, then it’s there for us to manipulate – a resource.” Viewing everything that makes up our planet – sparkling rivers running through a forest, salmon returning home, the skin of sea otters, trees older than human memory, a mountain created millions of years ago, the muscles and milk of herbivores, the labor of humans – as a “resource” belies its sacredness, its divine presence, its life. The use of the word “resource” shows how the universe is viewed – something Swimme suggested would amaze and disgust future generations – and he preferred to call it the “r-word.” Every time I have come across that word since his talk has given me a moment’s pause, and something to reflect on. Try this yourself, and see how pervasive it is.

Swimme mapped out the challenge that we now face:

To awaken to the current unraveling, to re-evaluate what we are about. He noted that it is not easy to eliminate a species, and given how often that is happening, there is something deep and pervasive going on.
To find a way to experience directly the immanent presence of the divine. The universe, Swimme argues, is permeated with divine light, that wants to create, to do something.

2009-07-18T22:06:00.000-07:00

Over the course of the last few months I've come across the term, Anima Mundi, latin for World Soul. It peaked my curiosity and I decided to do a little research. Anima Mundi's meaning is very literal- this world, actually this universe, has a soul. It was first directly mentioned by Plato in his writing, Timeaus. Marcus Aurelius also spoke about it beautifully in his Meditations: “Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; ... and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things that exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the structure of the web.”

It seems the Anima Mundi is just one way of identifying an all-encompassing non-material form. The concept of the Anima Mundi seems very similar to pagan beliefs of the Great Mother, the Spirit of Creation, or the Divine feminine counterpart. There are theistic faiths that believe the universe is synonymous with an immanent God (pantheism, pan=all and theo=god). Some traditions of Christianity have been pantheistic. Panpsychistic beliefs contend that the whole universe possesses a mind or consciousness. Animism, common among folk faiths, is the belief that every thing in the universe possesses a soul.

A Sufi teacher, Llywellan Vaughn-Lee, explains that the Anima Mundi is the Macrocosm of the Universe and the Individual is the Microcosm. The spark of life and light in the Anima Mundi, is also the spark in us and in all things. He teaches that when the individual nourishes it's own soul, it also nourishes the World Soul.

I believe in the Anima Mundi. Whether it is God, the Divine Mother, or a Collective Consciousness, it doesn't really matter to me. What matters to me is that there is something that contains everything. A whole, more than the sum of its parts. I don't believe that anything, anything at all in this world is isolated from anything else. Everything is part of a great whole.

What disturbs me is that for quite sometime we humans (especially us Western ones) are trying very hard to prove that we are isolated. We do not tolerate being subject to the consequences of someone else's actions. We've built physical, mental and spiritual barriers around us everywhere we go to prove that we are invulnerable and not responsible for anything other than our individual selves.

This is why I love food. Not only is it pleasurable and satisfying, but it is a constant reminder that we are connected. And we can't run away from it, we have to eat! I believe, now more than ever, gardening and eating are healing acts because they can bring us back, over and over to the basic truth that we are part of the universal family. And when you choose to be open to this truth, you can no longer look at a carrot and just see a carrot. You see the hands that planted it. The soil and microbes that nourished it. The sun and rain that nurtured it. And then if you really look, in the carrot you can see yourself. It's the spark. The same spark in everything. The spark of the World Soul.

(Orginally posted on growfoodfeedspirit.blogspot.com)

Environment & Spirituality

2009-07-18T21:55:00.001-07:00

I will be tracking my exploration of environment and spirituality on my own blog. I decided that, since I will be engaged in this inquiry for more than just one quarter, that maintaining my own blog would be worth while for me. I've just set up the first, introductory post (largely from my syllabus) - more to come soon.

Through the course of the quarter, I will record what I am learning in interviews, talks and lectures, small group discussions, research, and texts that I am reading. I will also explore my own connection with nature and reflect on that experience. While I do have my own religious and spiritual perspectives, which I expect will be revealed in the weeks ahead, I am choosing not to declare them here – as it is my interest to look for commonalities and ways to bring people together, rather than to drive us further apart.

The End of the Line: A Paradox Within

2009-07-17T10:58:00.000-07:00

After posting my accolades of the film screening, I had to take some time to reflect upon the panel discussion that followed. Index cards were circulated for the audience to write questions for the panelists. My question was: "Of the remaining fish (in the oceans), most are contaminated with PCB's, PAH's, dioxins and mercury. Why were toxics not mentioned in the film?"

The moderator, affiliated with the Seattle Chefs Collaborative, the Columbia Inter-Tribal Fish Commission and Marine Stewardship Council, read the question but omitted reading "PAH's".

(Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, known for carcinogenic and mutagenic actions, significant in benthic fishes (i.e. sole and flounder) as well as transient salmon species in the Puget Sound.) This is supported by much scientific data and is deemed an ecological risk.

Once the "edited" version of my question was read, it was obviously a "hot potato" that no one was eager to address. One panelist, a fisherman, influential in the Food and Beverage industry to improve seafood quality and spearheaded the marketing of Copper River and Yukon River salmon, stated "recent testing had been conducted on Yukon River salmon and there was no contamination of mercury found". That was the entirety of his response.

Another panelist, representative of the Living Oceans Society in B.C. with a specialty in open net-cage aquaculture in promotion of sustainable seafood replied, "to avoid mercury, eat lower on the food chain...PCB's are found mostly in farmed fish due to a higher fat content". The two other panelists did not respond. One was a writer for Edible Seattle, chef and founder of Seasonal Cornucopia, and the other, an author, sustainable sushi guide, restaurateur and seafood advocate affiliated with Greenpeace.

That was it, end of discussion on toxics in seafood! My reaction was of disbelief that this question could be so readily be dismissed. While infuriated, I put my Antioch cap on to reflect on why there was a lack of response to an issue that is so grossly connected to seafood sustainability.

In conclusion, I believe my question was beyond the scope of the panelists knowledge base. And, if it was not, it undermined the industry that they served. It was a paradox for them, as an acknowledgement of toxics in the sustainable seafood they promote and serve is to reveal a contradiction in their livelihood. Bottomline: Everyone has an agenda in which too much information can become inconvenient.

Reflecting on Food Inc.

2009-07-16T16:35:00.000-07:00

As part of our inquiry into the local food movement our group viewed the film Food Inc. This film compares agribusiness (http://www.tyson.com/ ) to small-scale sustainable organic farming (http://www.polyfacefarms.com/ ). The current state of the American food did not happen overnight and did not happen by accident. In this documentary the viewer is taken into factory farms to witness the conditions that these animals suffer in for their brief life. I found this film to be a good starting point but it did not delve deep enough into any one point, it is a good reference but a mediocre educational tool. Not to mention as we discussed after the film the only people willing to shell out the time and money to see this film are those who are already informed and interested, that is just preaching to the choir.

As far as the solution their main point is that the consumer votes at the register. I see the underlying problem as the consumer who is unaware of the systemic problems involved in buying a big mac and is not interested in a lifestyle change.

Somehow we have gotten to a point where most Americans have no clue where there food comes from and in many instances what exactly is in it. So what can we do? Personally I buy much of my produce at farmers markets I read labels and I ask questions. Change takes time but thankfully pandemic diseases move quickly. People need to support sustainable farming and we all need to start asking a lot more questions about where are food comes from.

If I were in charge I would require edible roof gardens installed on any building that can support it.

The End of the Line Where have all the fish gone?

2009-07-15T22:07:00.000-07:00

I attended the screening of this film last night that was followed by a panelist discussion. The production itself was informative, terrifying, disturbing and yet presented beauty and hope, - if we will it. The film presents a worldview of the plight marine life, documenting the procession of the denuding of the oceans for profit. Massive technological machines have declared war on the seas in which its inhabitants have no defense. The mission is to subvert for economic gain and it is escalating, seemingly immune to laws, regulations, policing and human consciousness. Viewers witness the slaughter of marine life that is barbaric and inconceivable. All the while avant-garde sushi restaurants flourish serving “designer” seafood to the wealthy, proudly labeling their delights as an endangered species despite the knowledge that the poor can no longer sustain themselves on the aquatic remnants left to them.

Anyone with an appreciation for life and the future of humanity will be changed after viewing this film. Whether one is a consumer of seafood or not, the ecological web of the oceans is the keystone to our existence on this planet. It is our responsibility to be stewards of our home and to demand that only sustainable seafood be sold and consumed. Ethical consumerism is a power we all have that can influence the demand on supply. Become educated in what you chose to eat. Question the source. Demand the truth.

Updated outreach plans with the DRCC

2009-07-14T14:10:00.000-07:00

I met with Cari and Sydney yesterday afternoon regarding my planned outreach and interviews of organizations participating in the upcoming Duwamish River Festival and DRCC's member organizations. I'm well aware of exactly why our course syllabi are "living documents" after this meeting.

Sydney is an Americorps member who is assisting Cari with the River Festival by creating a tri-fold display board about the Duwamish Valley Vision plan and organizations that are working in the following areas of implementation: policy and leadership, green infrastructure and environmental education. The focus of part of the display will be on organizations that are working to create Green jobs. In particular I am to contact these organizations via either e-mail and/or phone to discuss with them how they feel their organization's work connects with that of the Duwamish Valley vision plan. My objective with these short interviews is to obtain short quotes and photos that Sydney can use for the display. So my draft interview questions are:

1. Please describe briefly what your organization does, we are seeking quotes and photos from organizations about how your work connects to that of the Duwamish Valley Vision plan. What excites you about Green Jobs?

2. What connects Green Jobs to the EPA superfund cleanup of the Duwamish River?

3. How is the Duwamish affecting the work of your organization? As community members?

Cari was less interested yesterday in my proposed interviews of DRCC coalition members. She stated that this is a pretty busy time for them and that we need to focus on the River festival first. She also suggested that it might be better for me to find some way to talk to several coalition members at once, at future DRCC meetings instead of doing individual interviews.

I am planning to attend the River festival in the afternoon from 2:30 - 4 pm because the festival conflicts with my second residency for my Executive Coaching class. While at the festival I will be talking to attendees and conducting a brief survey to find out people's stories about how they feel the superfund cleanup and river impacts their lives. I'll be creating the questions for that short survey too.

Joyce Yee

Local Food Movement Inquiry

2009-07-13T10:21:00.000-07:00

Group members- Elise Child, Samantha Woodward and Erin Mercier

Learning Intentions:

To gain a systemic understanding of not only the history of food processing but the economics and unintended consequences behind agribusiness
To learn what is happening locally both in organic and factory farms
To formulate a clear understanding of the media's role in the misconception of organic and local
To gain hands on experience with organic urban farming

Learning/Support Group

2009-07-12T14:58:00.000-07:00

Group: Laura York, Laura T., Jamie Shairrick, Christian Schmitt
Group Agreements

Each group member will post weekly on the blog site.
Email videos, pics or docs to Britt if they need to be uploaded in Sakai.

Imaginary Lessons

2009-07-10T11:45:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I was daydreaming about getting lessons from a great cook. I imagined a motherly french woman, who grew her food with patience and tenderness, harvesting it carefully and thankfully, and preparing it with creativity and affection. As I imagined our first lesson, I quickly knew what her first words of advice would be: “The most important element of relationship with food,” she says in a thick french accent, “is love.”

Call it a cliché, but I believe it's the truth. Isn't love the most important element of our relationship with anything, or anyone? Consider, when we are born one of the first things we do in relationship with another human being is eat. We are fed, most often, by someone who loves us. Sometimes, we are fed from their own bodies. If you have ever fed a baby, or watched them being fed, it is almost impossible to not sense the presence of love. The baby breathes in out steadily, fingers and hands grasping in the air, and eyes that stare up almost in awe. Somewhere along the way, especially in the West, the love element in our relationship with food is stripped away to the bare-bones of fuel, pleasure and satisfying craving. With all the distractions and triggers in life, love in food is forgotten, like it is forgotten in so many other places.

After experiencing my imaginary lesson with the motherly french cook, I tried to hold an intention of love when I interacted with food. I have many opportunities as it is my job and my primary responsibility at home. I also garden and harvest food, and yet like any meditation, putting it into practice is not as easy as it seems. Of course, there is love somewhere behind my daily interaction with food, but bringing it to the surface of my awareness is difficult. Still like any meditation, the very act of trying, over and over again, is as important as the end goal. It is a loving act in itself. And throughout this study, this is what I intend to do.

Yes, my study is about spirituality and agriculture, not explicitly love and agriculture. But in my mind love evokes the spirit, it calls it into the room, it is it's language, it's music. Love is the most important element in our relationship with food because it is the tie that binds our soul to food, to the Creation and her gifts, and to the people we give and share it with.

(This post was originally made at http://growfoodfeedspirit.blogspot.com ).

Welcome to the Collaborative Methods Weblog!

2009-06-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

we'll go over this on the first day of class, but you can start fooling around with this now, if you wish.