School Begins

How to break down the walls of a classroom? My CEL Academy colleague suggested just start opening windows and get eyes off the screens. I have all these visions for my urban school-- bee hives with long chimneys for bees to exit and enter high above the playground activity like the one at the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden. I want all kinds of edible plants, but also plant guilds, and historical gardens to help teach the environmental history of the school yard before its concrete. I have so many inspirations in the Bay Area and now also in my mom's town of Essex, CT where vegetable gardens make the old colonial houses look like 18c. homesteads again. It's so critical with children and adults to as Carolie Sly at the Center for Eco-literacy says: make it simple, make it real and the opposite of boring. Not as simple as it sounds. So I revisited the CEL webiste and found the essays on the Change page to be another important starting point. Big breath-- o.k., so be it.

Suzanne Collins’s “The Hunger Games,” review: newyorker.com

Suzanne Collins’s “The Hunger Games,” review: newyorker.com

Strolling in a Storm: Walking Ecology

I walk to work during the storms instead of bike. It's a bit like preparing to go skiing with full pants and jacket since the wind over the last few weeks has whipped the rain diagonal and even pelted me briefly with tiny hailstones. Umbrellas are useless. Sounds tough but it isn't. A meditation in the rain is a great remedy for what a storm otherwise whips up-- that pent up cabin-fever feeling when you feel forced inside by the weather. The cabin fever is especially poignant in an urban setting where indoor space is often shared by so many people. I'm still surprised how during storms kids are encouraged to stay indoors as if puddles weren't for playing in. Staying indoors, storm ecology is what is lost. For instance, a five minute walk through the neighborhood in a downpour makes one aware of storm drains and wonder where the water goes and what it's collected along the way. Then there are the small ponds that form in the flatlands reminding us of our proximity to the water and the flooding that happens in spots close or even below sea level. A little hail triggers the joy of wondering what could make such a strange object suddenly drop from the sky. Just thinking about my storm strolls conjures words I love to say, poems I love to remember.

106. In a Station of the Metro Ezra Pound

THE apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Ecological Economics: Cloud Institute's free 2-day workshop (pdf)

From The Cloud Institute Bookstore: Ecological Economics: A Community Exploration (adult)

"This 2-day workshop uses a collection of readings,activities, reflections, and experiences to provide community stakeholders, individually and in groups, with a practical introduction to ecological economics. (200 pages)

Ecological Economics for Life is an admirable pedagogical program of participatory learning that elicits, explains, and integrates the basic principles and issues of ecological economics. ~Herman E. Daly

Free Downloadable PDF- The Cloud Institute

Ecological Tales from India

And here's another find showcasing ecological tales and video from India. Following a link from the Ecological Tales blog, I found the charming Urban Balcony written by a Delhi based gardener.

Great Environmental Ed Blog

I love this new blog find: Simplified Environmental Education.
http://enviroeduguide.blogspot.com/

Elder's wisdom

Margaret Oakley wrote a short on-line memoir "Growing up in Glennonville" about growing up in the 1930's on a family farm in Missouri. I like this passage: "Except for an acre, Papa and Mama's small farm has been sold off to a farming conglomerate. There are no wild rose fences left. The path running through the field to Uncle Carol's house has been plowed under. The persimmon tree that stood in the middle of the field for shade is gone. The wind blows the dust across the fields denuded of wind breaking trees. A dust devil can be seen rising into the air. The arrowheads in the old potato patch are buried under several feet of chemically fertilized soil. "Progress", you say?

The little house is slowly caving in. The curtains hang in shreds at the windows. Despite the decay, the tin roof that shelters the house can be seen in all its tarnished glory. Jonquils, planted by Mama so many years ago, still bloom in the yard each spring. Members of the Lady's Alter Society pick them to place on the altars at Easter Mass. Children beg to explore the old house when they pass by with their parents. They hope to discover a ghost lingering within. They need have no fear of the little spirit woman they have glimpsed. It is only Anna hurrying to the back porch, drying her hands on her apron, to welcome them"