Bees a PLENTY!

I have seen it. I have seen it up close and personal. A couple weeks ago as I was helping remodel my girlfriend Mora's cottage we had to call in a bee keeper! There was about twenty square feet of honeycomb about an inch thick just dripping with honey. Like Novella says in her book Farm City "most people- scared of bees but drawn to honey" . And it is true. Who actually likes bees buzzing and stinging and scaring little children. Virgil in his poem Georgics praises the bee and the beekeeper, but did he keep bees himself? History shows that Virgil was a poet and likely that he did not have to do much if any actual farm work. When I saw the bee keeper with his special vacuum for sucking up the little bees and his smoke pump I was excited, yet I still would not go within ten feet of the man until I knew the coast was clear. The honey is so worth the fear though. I think bees are an essential part of the garden that are often over looked.

I know that when I finally am able to have a place of my own that I will have two things for sure vegetables and bees. To me bees seem versatile. They live in all sorts of climates and there are many different types of honey producing bees. They pollinate your plants so that they can bear fruit and they create liquid GOLD. Pure HONEY! I absolutely love the taste of hone. I have honey every day wether it be just honey in my tea or the honey in the bread I eat my sandwiches on.

Could it be hard to over come my fear of bees? I hope not. Everyone is probably scared at first of the stings and the failure of a collapse, but everyone over comes that fear; if they want to be a bee keeper that is. I can imagine the bounty of honey that Mora has (now in jars). If only I can recreate the same thing except not in the middle of a wall because that removal was just way to difficult. I think if Novella can do it so can I. Maybe I need a trip to my personal Trees 'n Bees? Unfortunately Both time and location play a big part in gardening and bee keeping. I just do not have either the time or the place here at the big old Hayes Heally. My dream of liquid gold will have to be put on hold so that I can get a college learnin' first.

Pollan's Take on Cap and Trade

While I came into this class with a typical Western, romanticized paradigm, the arguments presented in Micheal Pollan’s Second Nature were extremely eye opening. He speculates that the capitalistic, resource-minded perception of nature and the Thoreau-based, naturalist view both stem from the culturally-ingrained, romanticized values which depict humans and nature as diametrically opposed, never to be integrated. However, as we learned through our readings, Pollan subscribes to an alternative perspective which includes humans as active and crucial participants in the natural world. As neither care-takers, nor alienated entities, Pollan asserts that humans should, and must, interact with nature in a responsible manner and should not be afraid to impact and alter nature accordingly, for we are just as much nature as are flora and fauna. Pollan’s arguments were very pivotal in shaping my own views regarding the interplay between humanity and nature, which Pollan argues are essentially one and the same. I have certainly come to evaluate many environmental issues, particularly the recent American Clean Energy and Security Act and Cap and Trade Bill, following this Pollan-instilled perspective, and I suspect many of my classmates have come to do the same.

The Cap and Trade Bill creates a system of allowances for companies to emit greenhouse gasses, the amount is a compromise between current and healthy emission levels. Companies can then sell unused credits to others companies who exceed their allocated “right-to-emit” credits, finally giving some incentive to stop polluting and start thinking about the future. Additionally, a Carbon Market Efficiency Board was established in order to supervise emissions and report sales of “right-to-emit” credits on the greenhouse gas emissions market. Failure to report emissions or comply with standards results in a fiscal penalties, $25,000 for each day of non-compliance. This cap and trade system finally gives companies an incentive to start thinking about the climate by using capitalism to motivate them into compliance. Of course this solution is not perfect, but over time it will certainly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sets the United States on the right path toward becoming an environmentally conscious society. In his second prime-time news conference since taking office, President Obama advocated the cap and trade bill, asserting that “it starts pricing the pollution that’s being sent into the atmosphere.”

The Cap and Trade Bill introduced in the American Clean Energy and Security Act facilitates a compromise between modern, industrialized society and responsible environmental consciousness. This represents a shift toward the melding of human activity and the environment which Pollan emphasizes as being so crucial in developing a new paradigm. As participants in nature, we will inevitably alter the environment; however, Pollan argues the importance of recognizing our impacts, when responsible, as part of the natural world rather than unnaturally changing its course . This is precisely what the Cap and Trade Bill aims to do in creating a system which integrates the capitalistic, resource harvesting temperament of industrialized society with responsible environmentalism. Accordingly, the Cap and Trade Bill seems to be very much in line with Pollan’s beliefs, those instilled in our class, as a means of facilitating this new paradigm of participation in nature.

A Greener Future

Kokua (ko-ku-ah), a Hawaiian word that can we defined as “help.” It is a word that is often used in Hawaii when people want to get the message across. The Kokua Foundation, a non-profit organization, was founded to educate the children of Hawaii to be environmentally aware and also to provide them with experiences that will further their appreciation for the earth. This organization is deeply concerned about making sure that the future generations are aquatinted with the natural world, and all that it has to offer.

Our future is in the hands of our children, and our children’s children. The importance our children being knowledgeable about the environment is crucial. It is their generation that will suffer the most, therefore it makes sense that they be educated on ways that could help better their well being. The Kokua Foundation has numerous programs to enhance the knowledge of these kids. As the foundation goes school to school, they teach children the three R's and also the importance of gardening.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Three simple steps to living a “greener” life. People nowadays don’t understand the concept of reducing and how vital it is for the sake of everyone here on earth. We all must cut back on things like long luxurious showers and getting plastic bags every time you go to the grocery market. By turning off the water when washing your body, you could are saving gallons of water. Not only will you have saved gallons, but you’ll be just as clean as if you were to leave the water running. So turning off the water is one way to reduce, but bringing your own shopping bag when going to the grocery market another way you can reduce your negative impact on the environment. Reusing is also something so simple, but is often looked over. Donating clothes to a thrift store or using reusable water bottles are two examples that are so effortless, and can make such an impact. Being that we live in a green city, recycling isn’t too much of an issue. If we all continue to follow the three R's, the greater the impact to a greener living will be.

In addition to the three R's, the Kokua Foundation makes a conscious effort to help elementary students reconnect with the earth by planting gardens that will they eventually harvest. This program also demonstrates the difference between an organically grown garden and a garden in which pesticides were used. We should all look to the Kokua Foundation as an

example, and do our part by living eco-friendly lives so that future generations will follow.

I just wanted to show people this image that caught my attention of Kansas from outer space. I thought it was interesting to see the tessellation of square patches dotted with round fields and the all the different hues of green and yellow. Check it out. http://digg.com/d315VS9

Virgil's Paradigm vs. Ours

Most of us in modern society were raised either in urban cities or in housing developments of the suburbs. We did not construct our homes or make our food and clothes by hand. Nor did we learn from anything other than textbooks during our educations (rarely did we learn hands-on). Our tract homes and apartments were built by hired workers and most likely, we never even saw any of the construction first hand. Our food, packaged in boxes and bought from chain grocers, and our clothing, purchased in stores as well, come from all over the world, from places we have never seen or even heard of. Some of us were never taught how to cook and fewer of us know anything about making clothes. Our lives are handed to us and as a result, our views of nature are limited and impersonal. Unless we grew up on a farm or were introduced to other forms of nature besides those which are man-made (lawns, backyards, parks, and recreational areas), nature to us is an abstract concept. It is merely a background for our lives and the place we walk on (literally and figuratively) because most of us have not had the opportunity to work with the land itself. We see ourselves and our society in general as being at the center of everything and this belief system results in our anthropocentric paradigm. Since we are the most important part of this universe, we must strive for perfection or as near to it as possible. We frown upon our mistakes, seeing them as only failures and things to be avoided at all costs. After all, we are all-knowing, and we are each other’s best models. The universe was made for us, and therefore we reign. Right?

In contrast, Virgil, and presumably many others of his time, saw nature in a much different light. According to him, nature is at the center of the universe and we are not. Nature is our host and she guides us in everything we do and essentially, teaches us the ways in which to survive. We must rely on nature for our means of living (food, water, and shelter) and as a result, we must work directly with her. We must look to nature for our knowledge, we must learn by her ways, and we must be guided by her principles. And if we do not rely on her for direction, we will fail. However, our modern society’s definition of failure is much different from Virgil’s. Failure, as Virgil saw it, is an opportunity for humans to learn from their mistakes and expand their knowledge. Virgil’s definition of failure stems from his close relationship with mythology. As a strong follower of mythology, he believed that Jupiter, the god of the heavens and of weather, brought trouble into the world in order to teach man not to take for granted what he has and to be resourceful. As a result, Virgil believed that although mistakes are inevitable parts of life, they give us knowledge and are therefore beneficial. He believed that we are only human and cannot expect to know everything. This point of view suggests that Virgil had an ecocentric paradigm and though we do not know enough about Virgil to prove this as his belief system, the likelihood of it being so is significant.

So now, I must ask: is our paradigm really preferable to Virgil’s? Or is it merely destroying nature and preventing us from a closer relationship with the earth? I cannot speak for anyone besides myself, but the latter rings truer for me and as a result, I have begun to readjust my paradigm. Virgil’s teachings have shown me that having an intimate relationship with nature and holding an ecocentric view of the world is the only way in which our society will survive for any extended period of time. In Georgics, he seems to caution us of this and I only hope that we will take his warning seriously because if we do not, who knows how little time we have left? A century? A decade? Even less?

What is Nature?

Growing up in a small suburb in the East Bay, my paradigm on Nature developed from a young age into a distant relationship with the idea of nature. Going to the beach or to a mountainous trail to hike, or a visit to the Lafayette-Moraga creek located outside of my house brought me closer to “nature”, otherwise I hardly encountered it on a daily basis. My paradigm was a distant relationship with whatever nature was in my mind, but even though I didn’t exactly know, it felt like something far away from my civilization.

As I read Second Nature: A Gardener's Education by Michael Pollan, my paradigm on nature is being tampered with and poked at with ever turn of the page. The more I read, the more I question my paradigm of what nature is and begin to reconstruct a new one. I am realizing that people are nature. Driving a car to go to nature is an idea of the past, because every decision I make, and every thought I have is a part of my culture, and I am nature.

I believe our paradigms should be questioned ever day because being stuck with tunnel vision is unhealthy, and leaves us blindsided by different possibility’s. As Pollan describes his paradigm in The Idea of A Garden, “Every one of our various metaphors for nature-wilderness, ecosystem, Gaia, resource, wasteland- is already a kind of garden, and indissoluble mixture of our culture and whatever it is that’s really out there” (181). Pollan’s idea that our different outlooks on nature are just superficial, and when it comes down to it, they are just ideas that we create in our minds leads me to think that humans always want to feel like they are in control of things. We create ideas about nature so that we feel powerful and in control of our surroundings, but really these are all just constructs of our minds.

Humans arrived on this planet with many tools that allow us to alter the previous path of Mother Nature. We were also given brains to make thoughtful choices and now it is up to humans to use them. We must look to ourselves, our own culture to create a harmonious, sustainable relationship with Mother Nature so that we don’t deplete her of natural resources. This is a very possible mission, and it will require a change in people’s paradigms on nature. When people realize and accept that our culture is nature, we can take big strides in improving the conditions on earth, and creating more sustainability. We must open our eyes to the impact we are having on Mother Earth without recycling and reusing many of our precious resources, and reshape our outlook and habits.

International Enviromental Agreements: Not So Easy

FYI: This article is about the largest meeting of nations to date, to work out environmental commitments such as emissions levels.  Reading it will give you a good picture of the difficult larger political and national issues involved, especially as economic development is so often perceived to be at odds with environmental protection.  What, if anything, is wrong with this paradigm?

Adopt an Acre

While sifting through my e-mails I came across one from the Nature Conservancy the subject line titled: Adopt a Coral Reef. As I began to read the e-mail I started to think about how many organizations and groups there are out there working to protect our environment. Every organization claiming they can fix the environment one by one. They show us how to recycle or create our own compost but little show any real direct dramatic change. I think that part of the reason many are reluctant to take these small steps toward helping the environment is because they don’t see any direct positive change that occurs. Adopting a coral reef is particularly interesting to me because in this case only a little money can make a big change. With this small effort we can actually see the direct impact it has on preservation of the environment.


In class and talking with people in general it seems that the majority of us want to help save our environment but don’t know how. Or we know of little things we can do like recycle or carpool but none of these seem to have any direct impact that we can see. With Adopt a Coral Reef, you can adopt an entire acre for $50. Some people may say $50, no way I can afford that, especially if you’re a college student. But think about it, for one less burrito a week in the cafeteria, in a little over a month you would have enough money to buy an acre and directly save part of our environment. I mean just check out the site; look at the beautiful places and animals you would be saving.


The idea of adopting a rainforest or a coral reef in order to preserve it seems to be coming back. Doesn’t everyone remember collecting pennies for the rainforest back in kindergarten? I think bringing some of these organizations back to the front burner of environmental activism would be a wise move. It would save acres of rainforest and coral reefs from destruction and pollution. On top of this I think it would get people more interested in environmentalism. They would be able to donate a small amount of money and know they would be saving a piece of our world from destruction. For many I think this would be an easy way for them to help our environment and feel like they actually contributed to the process. I knew I certainly felt like I had helped save a few toucans and sloths back in Kindergarten with all the pennies I saved.


I invite everyone to check out this site and everything the Nature Conservancy does. It really is interesting. Maybe you would be interested in adopting part of a coral reef. Or maybe you and your friends could get together and each chip in for an acre.

nature.org/coralreef

Great Morning in the Garden!

Check out the whole slide show!  http://picasaweb.google.com/English195/20090919GardenDayForTheFreshmanSeminar#

Controlled Environment

Burning down a forest in order to grow another forest; something this world has created with its logic. Now I have never actually witnessed a controlled forest fire, but I have seen some on TV. Their reasons behind burning down trees are that they want new and better ones to grow. It may not be a bad thing, but it is certainly an odd way to think about nature. Who would have guessed that by destroying something, you can actually make it grow and create something? Michael Pollan in “Second Nature” might have thought of this idea however, he says “nature herself doesn’t know what’s going to happen here” (183). He believes that nature does not know what its doing and needs a little help from the human culture. He knows that anything can happen and that there are many things that can happen to shape the forest.

He tells of how a severe enough fire can damage the fertility of the soil or a little fire can kill oak saplings and let the fire-resistant pine seedlings grow. He mentions many more ways the forest can turn out to become in his book “Second Nature”. Pollan says it is okay to “intervene” with nature, when really that just means it is okay to control nature.

We discussed how controlling nature has been done since the beginning of mankind. The American Indians used the lands as well to live off of and they shaped the forest and lands to the way that best suited them. For instance how they set fire to lands in order to grow taller grass for the animals to eat. So is nature really still nature? Or some kind of formation now we call nature? Since we already stepped in before and “helped” the forest a little, why can’t we do it again? To me, if it was once considered nature, it will always be considered nature unless it is demolished off the face of the earth.

A tree will always be a tree, even if mankind helps it grow. A flower will always be a flower, even if it is grown indoors. As long as the forest is grown back and is there, then it shall be always be a forest, even if human culture shaped it the way they wanted it to become. A rose called by any other name, shall still be a rose.

Everyone digg our blog so it can get to the front page!

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Shortage of Water

Shortage of Water

A striking fact that I found on the Internet was that an average American consumes about 159 gallons of water per day, while the rest of the world uses 25 gallons. http://www.mindfully.org/Sustainability/Americans-Consume-24percent.htm

I believe that we are taking advantage of a resource that we have. We are taking water for granted, because in some other countries or continents, people don't even have clean water. For example, in Africa, 42 percent of the population does not have clean water, and almost 9000 children die everyday from contaminated water. People walk miles just to get a bucket of contaminated water. The WAI( Water, Agriculture, and Industry) want to increase "sustainable economic and social development opportunities." http://www.prweb.com/releases/Africa/nonprofit/prweb2308064.htm

They are collecting money so that people can have clean water, like we do. And it is very important that we work to get other people in the world access to clean water. Most people don't really think about what is happening in continents like Africa. Similarly, in Ethiopia, the population is 85 million, and 49 million do not have water. http://water.org/Ethiopia/

This should just convince us more that we are very lucky, but we don't realize it, or we don't want to. Maybe if we compare the amount and quality of the water we have, then we can understand how fortunate we are, and how we need to appreciate what we have by not wasting it.

A couple days of ago I saw an interesting commercial on television about conserving water. The commercial showed a cartoon woman washing her hair, and a clock next to her that was timing the length of her shower. She stopped taking her shower after two minutes, and then it said that we need to take shorter showers, and in general, use less water, so that we can save a lot of water. This commercial really made me stop and think about what we talked about in class for a little, about saving water. I never really thought about how much water I use before, for example, I might take 15 minute showers, but when I saw this on television, it really struck me. I think it had an affect on me, and maybe others because we are always listening to what companies on television, and in the media are telling us, and if they tell us important things, like saving water, or helping the environment, then maybe change will happen. An example of this are some of my family members. I actually asked them about the ad on television, and their response was that they have some other things on their mind right now other than conserving water. When I heard this, I really understood that a lot of people in today's society think this way. People have busy lives these days, with work, school, shopping, and since the excessive use of water does not affect them directly, then they don't really stop to think about it.

We need to conserve water because the Bay Area has been suffering from a drought for a few years now. Reservoirs, rain, and run-off are very low. There are many counties in the Bay Area that are having either mandatory or voluntary conservation of water. I think that in order for people to feel they are responsible to protect the environment, they need to be affected in some way, so that they feel like they need to change something. For example, people might conserve water in a drought when they really have a limited amount of water, and if they use too much, they know what the consequence will be. In some Bay Area counties, people would be fined if they used water that was not necessary to use, like watering lawns. Watering flowers, and lawns is not very important, and one can live without that. We should only be using water for important things, like short showers, and brushing teeth, and most of all, be grateful for what we have.

The idea of community gardens is one that really makes my heart warm. I had a great experience at the Alice Griffith community garden. Getting off the train and walking down the street we knew that our group of white bread suburban teenagers did not fit in. We heard jeering from the locals and our group was confused. We where there to help, but the environment seemed wrong. When we did arrive to the garden we where greeted with a huge welcome, because us white boys where gonna do the dirty work. We worked diligently on getting rid of an extremely invasive weed called bermuda grass. Like What I have read in Pollan’s book Second nature it is not easy to garden. The question who is a pest and who is not is one that takes a lot of deliberation. Who are we to choose that bermuda grass is bad? Well, I could easily see that the Bermuda grass was swallowing up all of the soil surrounding the seedlings of great vegetables such as zucchini and kale.

So off to work our group went. Turning the ground and sorting out every single piece of root by hand. I think that we can call this grass a pest because it snuffs out the little seedlings, and the community benefits so much from these plants. Most people could not afford the quality of produce that comes from that garden and I think that people have the right to choose organic even if they are not able to afford organic. Community gardens such as this make it possible to open everyones mind to gardening too because they depend on volunteers to cultivate the land. The way I see is that gardening can be a great part of the development of a persons life. Like Pollan if you are exposed to the idea of cultivating the land at an early age it can become a great hobby and lively hood in the future. If only I could have had a better chance like they have at Alice Griffith.

I have a great appreciation for those who can garden organically. Like Pollan, Alice Griffith has chosen to go the route of organic gardening. They too add lady bugs to rid themselves of aphids and they hand remove all of the pesky weeds, no round up for them, and they have a fence to keep out the wild life. The work is hard though. I think that because I had little exposure myself and no appreciation for gardening as a child I cannot put forth as much effort as other people who went with me. I like the american idea of nature, but as I look more and more I find that I like the idea less and less. I belong in the city, but that does not mean that I have to be separate. Places like community gardens bring people together with nature and each other.

The Consequences of "Recklessness"

On November 7, 2007, a 900-foot Hong Kong-registered oil tanker crashed into the San Francisco Bay Bridge, unloading between 53,000 and 60,000 gallons of fuel oil into the bay. The consequences of the crash were fatal to some 2,000 birds and a wide array of other species that call the Bay their home; sixteen beaches were closed; but who else felt the repercussions? Captain John J. Cota, the pilot of the ship, relinquished his license after having served the San Francisco Bay Area for more than twenty five years and has been sentenced to ten months in prison. He was charged for “negligently causing discharge of a harmful quantity of oil in violation of the Clean Water Act (CWA), as amended by the Oil Spill Act of 1990” and for “violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, by causing death of protected species of migratory birds” (U.S. Department of Justice).

On April 27, 2003, a Bouchard Transportation Company-owned tank crashed into an obstacle and caused 98,000 gallons of oil to spill into Buzzards Bay in Massachusetts. Similar to the crash in our own San Francisco Bay, it caused the deaths of hundreds of birds and the contamination about ninety miles of shoreline. The captain of the ship, Franklin Robert Hill, was sentenced to five months in prison after pleading guilty to the same charges as Cota, above. In an article put out by the Boston Globe following the sentencing, Shelley Murphy reported, “‘This was extremely serious negligent conduct, rising to the level of recklessness,’ said U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert B. Collins, adding that he had the send Franklin Robert Hill to prison to send a message to others who navigate oil barges.” Jail time is quite a message, indeed. But why the increase in sentencing for a decrease in the amount of oil leaked? Is the disparity between the two spills just?

We are taking mistreatment of the environment more and more seriously every day, whether it be in consequences for major transgressions, such as the two instances discussed above, as well as for far smaller infractions, such as littering or even idling your car for longer than five minutes in designated areas (see the parking spaces alongside campus on Golden Gate Avenue, for example). Lawmakers are setting the minimum penalties on environment-related misdemeanors higher and higher to encourage people to be thoughtful about their actions in regards to how they treat the planet. Despite these attempts, however, are people willing to change their ways—in both small and large-scale ways—to savor the Earth’s scarce resources?

Industrialization vs. Nature

Have you ever thought about those poor dead animals slumped across the side of the road?  Industrialization has caused America to care less about the nature we are losing, and more about materialism. Barry Lopez’s essay “Apologia” examines the meaning of our wildlife and the harm our vehicles can cause them.

Lopez journeys through the Midwest to his friend’s house, but makes many unusual and unexpected stops on the way. Each time he sees a dead animal in the road, he stops, picks it up off the road, and moves it to the side as a kind of burial gesture. I would wince at the birds, skunks and possums that I saw strewn across the street, but think nothing of them after I pass. Lopez describes them as “a solitary child’s shoe in the road,” how carelessly these animals go unnoticed. He ponders on what kind of life these animals may have had and in an instant all that they may have strove for vanished. He personifies the animals as if they were human bodies lying on the side of the road: “The skull, I soon discover, is fractured in four places; the jaw, hanging by shreds of mandibular muscle, is broken at the symphysis, beneath the incisors. The pelvis is crushed, the left hind leg unsocketed.” It is this kind of point Lopez tries to make, that our nature is dying one by one by the huge destructive machines we drive in. Each life lost is precious, even if it is just an animal or insect. They are a part of a larger picture in this world, a part of nature, something we prize so much but take advantage of because we consider it so insignificant. He sets aside not only big and small animals, but he even cleans up the little insects splattered against the front of his car: “I finger-scrape the dry, stiff carcasses of bumblebees, wasps, and butterflies from the grille and headlight mountings.” He then continues to say, “I am uneasy carrying so many of the dead,” describing all the insects he had on his hand. I would have never considered the bugs on my windshield anything but something to clean off when I’m at the gas station. The world seems to be too busy to consider the small things in life; its focus is caught up on the race for technology.

            Materialism is Lopez’s idea of “the weight to fall I cannot fathom, a sorrow over the world’s dark hunger,” the hunger for industrialization without considering the damage we might cause to nature. Cars are just one example of the human greed for materialism and even though we might feel bad for contributing to the massacre of nature, people won’t give up their cars because it is a convenient way of life. I grew up in the suburbs and it is much easier to take a car around than to find public transportation. Making a change to save our nature is not easy, especially if it is something drastic like getting rid of our cars. Even though vehicles are the cause of all the lives lost in the story, in the end Lopez gets in his car and drives away. He doesn’t give up his car even though he too hit an animal because he is not about to travel through the Midwest walking or riding a bike. It’s just too difficult.  He conveys the message of how people may want to contribute to a greater good, but the convenience of technology makes it a thousand times harder to. In the Story of Stuff, a video that explores the daily life

of human consumption and its impact on the world, our way of life is summed up in a routine of working, sleeping and shopping. Our culture gives further insight to the notion of Lopez’s industrial destruction of nature, and our lives do not influence the protection of it.

As humans we need to reflect on our lives and realize how we can reduce our negative impact on nature, if not by reducing cars on the road, then by something simple like reducing water use, recycling, or composting. Adding this to a part of our daily life could make a difference because, as Lopez says, our current way of life is “too morbid to write out, too vivid to ignore.”   

The Problem with the Plastic Swirl

The garbage patch or Pacific Gyre is a spot in the Pacific Ocean, almost directly between Asia and North America where a trash dump has grown to be bigger than Texas. This is not an intentional dump, like a landfill; it has been growing over time because of the way the current moves in a circular pattern in the ocean. All the trash, mostly plastic, is basically trapped in a vortex. Since studies done in the 1990’s the quantity of the plastic has tripled from about 320,000 to 1 million particles per square kilometer.

Imagine being an animal living in or around the water around this area...It would be like living in the city dump buried underneath everybody's trash. Except this isn't just the trash from one city, it is coming from the whole world. The animals in this region are literally eating plastic for meals; it is not just a little bit of plastic that is contaminating their food; it is more like they can find a little bit of food that is contaminating their plastic! These poor animals are dying because they are stuffing themselves full of plastic, leaving no room for food or even water. Scientists Michelle Hester and Hannah Nevins have been doing research on seabirds, and have found such things as fishing line, industrial plastic pellets, and even pacifiers in the stomachs of birds. This doesn’t only affect the birds; the plastic has even been found in phytoplankton and zooplankton. These are the smallest known organisms in the ocean. The bottom of the food chain one might say, meaning that every other animal that preys on the plankton is also eating plastic.

There are so many different aspects of this huge trash pit to think about; how could we, as a society, let our habits become so life threatening? How do we justify this to future generations? Who is to blame, if anyone? How much more of this can the Earth endure? What can we do to help!?

In 1862 Alexander Parkes unveiled the first type of man made plastic at a London exhibition. This was the first time anyone had seen anything of the type, and Parkes claimed that his invention could do anything that rubber could do. Parkes invention spewed a whole line of new inventions that stemmed around plastic. So, plastic was the new thing. And soon enough it became the only thing. Anything you can think of can be packaged in plastic like water, hygiene products and food. Many products are made entirely out of plastic like notebooks, storage items, household appliances, fashion accessories and bags. All of these items have to go somewhere. Plastic is not biodegradable, so where does it go? If plastic is recycled properly, it will be broken down and reused to make other plastics, but if not it ends up in landfills, making them toxic, and now a greater and greater number of them are floating over to the Pacific Gyre.

It may seem like an impossible task to even attempt to clean up this trash pit when more and more plastic products are being created on a daily basis. There has yet to be an attempt to clean up this mess, but I think with enough people and determination this problem can be fixed. I think the bigger problem is that this Great Garbage Patch is not something that is widely known. Once the word is spread, the work can start, the more people the better to clean this up. The one thing I can think of that would be most effective would be to implement a system like the ones used in the fish farming business. Huge nets could be thrown into the water to gather the garbage.

With greater efforts being made to make our cities sustainable, and our societies more environmentally conscious, I believe cleaning up the Pacific Gyre will be a step in the right direction. It will be a huge project, but imagine how many more animals will live!

What's Your Paradigm?

When we talk about being "out in nature," we're announcing our paradigm. We believe nature is "out there" somewhere, and we need hiking boots and a backpack to get there. When we talk about "appreciating nature," we're also announcing our paradigm. We appreciate things at a distance, as though we are observers, not participants. As though we ourselves are somehow not nature, too. And being "close to nature" or "in harmony with nature"--well, what do we mean by that? What do we unconsciously believe?



Language is powerful, and the words we choose, the phrases we use--all shine a light on how we think. And thought and language in turn give rise to action.

That's the premise of this class--that creative writers, whose gifts are language and ideas, have something important to tell us, and in ways that newspapers, editorials, letters or scientific journals don't. Our first task is to read these writers carefully, to understand the relationship between their language and ideas, and to work toward reading and understanding ourselves and our own ideas better.

Kathleen Jamie's "Pathologies" and Michael Pollan's Second Nature: A Gardener's Education both bring us face to face with that Romantic paradigm we've inherited from Thoreau: the idea that, as Jamie says, nature is all "primroses and dolphins." This paradigm ignores the "nature" of the human body in all its glory and frailty; and suggests that we have to choose: nature or culture, wilderness or the city. It's taken me a long time to shake that paradigm loose from my own brain. I used to wonder, if I really want to be environmentally responsible, don't I need to move to a yurt out in the country, grow my own food, dig a well, knit sweaters from my own goats, and read by candlelight?

In my book about Kansas, My Ruby Slippers (not out yet), I write about my own process of discovering a new paradigm for my relationship to the planet, and to place. At one point, I really, finally get it. To be "in harmony with nature," you don't have to "go back to the land." We're already on the land. Even in the city, we're on the land. So the question we've all been making our way toward is, "How then shall we live?"

Do you share the paradigm that you've either got to get a yurt in the country, or accept the evils of civilization (whatever we mean by that word)? When you think of "nature," is your mental picture filled with dolphins and daisies? Would you, like Michael Pollan, decide to put up a fence to keep the woodchuck out of the arugula? Or would you allow the beast to make a salad whenever it wants because after all, it's his home, too? Are you busy trying to shake loose your own paradigms? Have you discovered yet what they are?

The question of paradigms matters, because it helps us edge toward that even bigger question that's been lurking at the edges of our conversation: How do we save the planet? Are we too late?

I believe that literature can give us the tools to imagine a new perception, to shape new paradigms, and to find a new relationship with our environment. As the Wendell Berry poem on our syllabus says, "Let imagination figure your hope." And let hope propel you to action.

For some inspiration, I include this commencement address by Paul Hawken at the University of Portland: http://www.fallingwhistles.com/blog. Most people reading this blog are not graduating, but this address seems apt, since we're all at the commencement of something big. Read it and see what you think.

Check out Pollan's latest article in the Times:

Big food vs. Big insurance

He makes a great point on corporate interest and why it is we address healthcare (treating the effects of the problem), rather than addressing the problem itself, obesity and an increasingly unhealthy population.

A New View of the Native American Land Ethic

We recently read Luther Standing Bear’s essay “Nature,” at once a description of the Native American relationship to land and an indictment of the Westerner’s destructive behavior. Though written in the 1930s, his words nevertheless ring true today. Take this passage: “Indian faith sought the harmony of man with his surroundings; the other sought the dominance of surroundings…In sharing, in loving, one people naturally found a measure of the thing they sought; while, in fearing, the other found a need of conquest.”

Conquest and domination…

“Yes,” I found myself nodding in sad resignation. “That’s what we do.”

Of course, that’s not all we do. The cult of Nature-Worship is alive and well in this country, and many of us run for the mountains - or the beach, or the woods, or the lake- as often as our tight schedules will allow.

And I thought, how ironic, that we live such disastrously consumptive lives in our cities and suburbs- driving around in cars that belch out pollution and gobble up fossil fuels, for example- yet when on rare occasion (if we’re lucky) we do find time to go “out to nature,” we strive to embrace the ideals that Luther Standing Bear described. We step as if in a church, or in a gallery full of precious and fragile artifacts, careful to “take only pictures, leave nothing but footprints.” We hope to leave things exactly as we found them, at least in the few places we’ve chosen to preserve. After all, that’s what the Native Americans would have done, right?

Well, not exactly.

Over the summer I read a remarkable book called 1491. Written by Charles C. Mann, this book describes the people, civilizations and landscape of the Americas before European arrival. And while Mann shatters a number of myths about pre-Columbian life, the book hinges on two major premises;

The Americas were much more densely populated than we thought, and the native inhabitants had much more impact on the land than we ever imagined.

Experts quibble over exact numbers, but according to Mann between 90 and 112 million people lived in the Western Hemisphere prior to European contact, ten times as many as textbooks proclaim. The reason for the disparity? Until recently, archaeologists and anthropologists severely underestimated the utterly devastating effects of European diseases on native peoples. Successive waves of these diseases- smallpox among them- killed off 80 to 90% of the native populations. By the time European settlement really got going, the damage had already been done, which also helps explain why settlers so easily subdued the remnants of tribes that survived.

In order to grasp Mann’s second premise, I had to realize that most native peoples were primarily farmers who supplemented their diet with foraging and hunting, not the other way around. For example, tribes in what is now the eastern United States planted vast fields of maize around their villages (along with beans, squashes and native grasses), and wielded fire as a tool to manage the land. Not only did they use fire to stave off the encroaching forest, they also used it in the forest, maintaining open, “park-like” tracts that pleased newly-arrived Europeans. As tribes retreated before the wave of settlers, so too the memory of native-set fires faded, until people assumed that eastern forests were the way they were, naturally. They forgot that, in fact, people had helped shape them.

1491 unearths the richness and diversity of pre-Columbian societies, and inevitably reveals the full extent of the tragedy- what we’ve lost. But the book also points to an opportunity.

What if we were to take a new look at the original inhabitants of this land, and learn from them- not by seeing them as passive recipients of the land’s bounty, but as active managers of its resources?

You could argue that this is already happening. The Forest Service, for example, finally saw the folly of a century of fire suppression and now regularly conducts “controlled burns” to clean up cluttered forests and reduce the likelihood of devastating wildfires.

The newly emerging picture of native peoples should give us hope. At one time this land supported large, healthy and successful populations, who used resources without destroying them, not by cordoning some chunks of land off in preserves and radically exploiting others, but by acting as knowledgeable stewards.