Plum Tree Solstice

in the longest dark night
sliver of moon
silver bark thread bare
a hummingbird sits there
high on a top perch
buds already visible
white blossoms soon
for Chinese New Year

in the shortest light day
I write here nostalgia
moments just passed
tick tock
the ocean keeps time too
techno jellies
swimming across my screen
as if a photo might be just
what we need to save
a life

our tree outside
what makes
its bitter sweetness?
how does it create so much
so always
from its concrete roots?

Eco Lit

Turns out there's a professor at Naropa University whose been teaching Eco Lit for ten years: An Ecosystem of Writing Ideas is a lovely site with poems written from the class.

One Boy Told Me

Naomi Shihab Nye's poem "One Boy Told Me"
Played this reading a few times to my 3 1/2 year old. He remembers it and talks about it all the time now. I guess what I want to remember is that it's the language of a toddler's questions, his contrarian stance, his play that has a revolution in it that I think might help us shift mindsets. You know, like Jacks reply to my explanation of God. I said I sometime see God as a tree. He replied, "My god is a gun." My little Kurt Cobain. His reply made me mad! But now it reminds me that sometimes when we claim something like a natural object as the symbol of a cause it is already a myth. It is already a heavy power tool in any dialogue. It's self-serious, too earnest, not slippery enough to empower. Explication is not really going to make most of us ecologists.

Solstice

Happy Winter Solstice! On this stormy winter day-night I'm thinking of my dad's love of storms. We didn't celebrate the solstice together but I'd like to believe he would want to be remembered on a day like this one. So this one's as much for you, Dad, as it is for all the wild things enduring the wind and rain.

Sea Fever John Masefield (one of Dad's favorites)

I must down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.

I must down to the sea again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the seagulls crying.

I must down to the sea again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

Maira Kolman's Blog

Check out Maira Kalman's Blog: Back to the Land. She's the author of Elements of Style, many children's book and my favorite book by hers: The Principles of Uncertainty.

Winter Vegetable Garden for West Berkeley Schools

Here's some ideas for plants for a winter garden. We can plan it over the next month and plant any of these vegetables during the winter months:

November/December: Broccoli, Cabbage

January: Lettuce, Onions, Radishes, Rhubarb, Spinach and Turnip
February: Artichoke, Fava Beans (good for the soil), Beet, Cabbage, Carrot, Collard, Lettuce, Onion, Pea, Spinach, Swiss Chard

In March if you plant the following you can harvest and eat before the end of school:
March planting for May/June harvest: Carrots, Beets, Chard, Lettuce, Peas, Garlic, Onion

The Hummingbird Diaries or The myths of hummingbirds

I woke up after yesterday's Leadership Academy at the Center for Ecoliteracy humming with ideas for a memoir. Doug and I talked themes this morning-- something like blue blood goes rogue, he said. I said, "i'm thinking something like the Hummingbird Diaries-- a series of short essays, creative non-fiction about where I am now, how i got here, and most of it about the family: Grandpa's life." Grandpa Campbell worked as the CFO for the Manhattan Project and then as the US Comptroller General for Eisenhower. He left his wife with five boys to marry his mistress, a Standard Oil heiress. I want to write about the contradictions of their lives: eccentricity born of wealth and privilege played out in awesome nature in Cooperstown, NY and Florida where my heiress grandmother and my grandpa showed me it's not about the money ; for her it was simplicity, place, watercolors, lilies by the boathouse, an old pilot boat called the dirty bird, cobwebs, bats. huge turtles that came up from the lake and laid eggs next to the tennis courts, but also sculpture, gardens, woods, Leatherstocking Falls, fossils in the slate, forgotten graveyards in the hills. It was not Grey Gardens, my grandmother was an artist who still lived in the social world. But like Grey Gardens, there is something similarly compelling about Werf, how she ditched wealth, divorced it, de-emphasized it, having hay parties instead of expensive catered events under pristine white tents. And maybe it was because she never went to school. She was raised by governesses, on boats, on horses, in the Old World between England and the US. while my grandfather was growing up in a poor Scottish family in New York City rising to power with scholarships and strategic alliances. And my dad was influenced by all of this. Raised by a willful mother in New Cannan with 4 brothers and his own hen house. Unpack most white American families and you will find similar themes. We were wrapped up in the weapons industry, the big oil industry, first the depression fears that turned into institutionalized racism, then the cold war fears that made industry and consumerism into a kind of salve. The fact is money did matter especially when you didn't have it.
ok -so there is also this Roland Barthes thought i had. like making it the Hummingbird Mythologies. How myths in my life, family myths, cultural myths can be unpacked and demythologized. I once wrote about the buttes of Monument Valley in Westerns like My Darling Clementine. They signified illusions of American Romanticism- illusions of the endless frontier to colonize/the endlessness American innocence. Of course pretty close to where atom bomb testing took place. At home in the 80's and 90's another romantic family myth: Diane Von Furstenberg meets jackie o, my mom as jackie o (not jackie kennedy.) how obama made my right wing mom almost liberal, how if you keep moving the sand from the sand bars off the Atlantic coast the beach will keep rebuilding itself and old the beach houses will be saved at no small expanse to the purse or the eco system.

i want my story also to be about the way i fell in love with natural objects even when mom was trying to get me to go glam, buying me handfuls of Diane Von Furstenberg dresses to cure my broken heart and help me find a rich husband. How after failing to land the rich Swiss guy at 33 I woke up realizing i wasn't going to get what my mom has. That's when I started categorizing people as feral, outdoor, indoor/outdoor or just indoor cats. And decided i might just end up going feral.

Eye on Berkeley

Doug Oakley, Oakland Tribune journalist's blog

Go Green Challenge for prek-3 grade Arthur fans

Go Green Challenge for prek-3 grade Arthur fans

Back to school links

Just found this Planet Green site for Back to School ideas.

Check back in October for my debriefs of Bioneers Smart By Nature intensive and the first session of the Eco-literacy Center's Schooling for Sustainability Leadership Academy.

Edible City movie trailer and Matthew Crawford's Soul Craft

Newest link from Emmanuel: Edible City movie trailer. The documentary tracks urban gardeners, some right here in the Bay Area, doing cool urban farming and explains why it's important. EB Alums are involved in the project: Bret Turner, Andrew Hasse and other people. Would be great paired with the new documentary Food Inc.

Edible City Trailer 2 from East Bay Pictures on Vimeo.

Also, to check out latest New Yorker book review "Book Fast Bikes, Slow Food and Workplace Wars" of Matthew Crawford's Shop class as Soul Craft. The review explicates some of the current intellectual discussions in the US around work/the importance of craft (doing something w/your hands)/ and localism (in the Michael Pollan model.)

Potato Tower link to SF Chronicle article & Material lists

My colleague Emmanuel Coup (our webmaster and 7th and 8th grade Math teacher) and I are spending the summer trying to figure out how to build a garden at our school-- our building is rented (we're a private school) and the schoolyard is recently beautifully repaved and blackened concrete. So we'll have to pirate a site somewhere outside the school fence in the parking lot where gardening will be somewhat safe from wind and vandals. Or if that plan gets vetoed we're thinking container gardens that can be sent home w/ students as a long term homework project.

Emmanuel found this relevant article about potato towers.

His wife, Shirley Watts, a professional gardener, sent along this critical info. re. raised beds and container gardens:

Materials needed:
Redwood Boards: 22 boards 2x12x8 (rough RRO) @ $3.83 Linear Foot: $704

Hardware:
One 10lb box outside deck screws: $35 (make sure heads fit hardware)
12 Simpson ties (stair angle for inside corners # TA10Z): @$6 = $72
24 L Angle brackets (5-1/2”) by Stanley (for outside top & bottom of each joint): @$3 = $72
Flat 6” Stanley reinforcement hardware to reinforce sides: 24 @ $2= $48
Weedblock: One 4x50 roll @ $25 (may need to get at Home Depo)

Wine barrels/Large 15+ gallon pots: 2 (Home Depo or OSH or Rosenblum)
Soil: Davis St. Whole Earth Mix; 4cu yds@ $30/yd: $120


Tools needed for raised bed build date:
Electric Saw (need power outlet access)
Saw horses/table
Measuring tape
Electric drills (or battery powered)/bits
Screw drivers

Garden Anywhere Boxes for k-12

Curriculum idea for grades 1-8 @ schools addicted to concrete:
Every student has to find a recycled wooden or metal box or bin about the size of those used for cases of wine. When school starts we take field trips to local edible gardens in Berkeley (King's famous Edible Schoolyard, Le Conte, Willard where they've made a pizza oven out of mud), students drill holes in their boxes, build a compost and a worm bin to begin preparing rich soil with compost (preferably made at school from composted student lunches and yard waste). In December, we plant fava beans for the winter, to prepare for Feb./March plantings of onions, garlic, spinach, carrots, nasturtiums, lettuce, sweet peas, etc. Finale in May/June, after contests for most beautiful or bountiful box, each makes a short cooking demonstration movie in Spanish or French using harvest from his/her box.
Materials (goal: keep cost of whole project for 40 students to under $50):
soil
seeds
saw horses and recycled door as a work space to attend to boxes at school
Resource book: Garden Anywhere by Alys Fowler

Educational objectives: This is a project that can be linked to every class. For example, it could be a touchstone for every 8th grade class:
Geometry classes could build compost and worm bins;
Science could discuss plant guilds, nutrition, ecology, use of sustainable resources, English tie in could be eco-journalism, discussions around Fahrenheit 451or Brave New World
Algebra- word problems around energy conservation; volume
Spanish, Chinese, French: students will make their food demonstrations in a second language; literature and current event articles can also be a part of the reading and conversations in class
In art students can decorate the boxes

What's the point? to reengage with and care for plants and the soil, air, water needed to grow them well because they embody the processes that make it possible to take care of ourselves and our environment better. Garbage that becomes great soil for great edible plants remind us why recycling and composting is worth the daily discipline. At least that is a hypothesis. Let's test it out.

Plum leaves June

Wine dark leaves
boughs bear
the weight
as she,
our plum tree,
feeds the now:
shiny fruit,
red squirrel,
Anna's hummingbird,
Mrs. Robinson,
the man down the street
who grew up on Blake
and lives in the park
now

I wait
for plum butter
I'll make on
Bodie's birthday

Resources for teachers and students

Reading Terrain magazine's latest issues, got me going on a new list for students and teachers looking for sustainability links:
6-12th grade
•a visit to City Slicker Farm- good way to introduce idea of urban farming and local social justice issues specifically in regards to food security.

•Grist.org: an engaging environmental web site

•Terrain's "Teens with Green" reading list by Rachel Aronowitz:
Flush and Hoot by Carl Hissen;
Teen, Inc. by Stefan Petrucha;
Thoreau's Walden by John Porcellino (a graphic novel);
Generation Green: The Ultimate Teen Guide to Living an Eco-Friendly Life by Linda and Tosh Silvertsen;
My Space/OurPlanet: Change is Possible by the MySpace community with Jeca Taudte

•Brower Youth Award and Earth Island Institute Check out website/video and past award winners

K-5
• The Recycling Movie made by kids about recycling: request free copies by sending email to Craig Matis at cmatis@laurelschool.org or nclark@laurelschool.org
•Go to www.stopwaste.org to register for "Field trip program for Alameda County 4th and 5th grade classrooms focusing on the 4Rs - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rot (compost) that includes a tour of the Davis Street Transfer Station to see recycling and garbage transfer operations, a presentation on the 4Rs and a hands-on activity.

All grades
• a visit to Martin Luther King School's Edible Schoolyard or at least to the website's inspiring videos featuring Ecole Bilingue Alumni parent Alice Waters talking about her idea for the schoolyard

•follow the Plastiki Expedition, the adventure of a boat built out of plastic bottles that will sail the Pacific to chronicle the plastic waste. This story and the New Yorker article about it can be paired with the new movie Addicted to Plastic (see below)
•Eco Center's Education links

Awesome Local Professional Development Ops in Sustainability:
•Center for Eco-Literacy
•Brower Center Programs and Exhibitions
•see the latest on-line essays written by Eco Literacy Staff and Fritjof Capra's article

Good brand new movies for grades 7-12 students:
Burning the Future see New York Times Review
Addicted to Plastic