Green Gal

To celebrate 30 years of oceanic wonder and opportunity to learn about the secret world of the sea, the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California had a week of free admission for residents of Monterey, San Benito, and Santa Cruz counties. My co-residential adviser and I decided to bring two van-loads of our residents to the aquarium because as UCSC students, we also had access to free admission. See all photos from my visit here . We headed to Monterey today in the rain with 12 residents and 3 RAs including myself. I took tons of photos and enjoyed learning about and observing jellyfish, puffins, penguins, sun fish, sea stars, and ton of other interesting creatures. It was really crowded because of the free admission, but I was inspired by how many people took the opportunity to visit the Aquarium, which normally costs about $40 per person. Free admission allowed community members and families of all means to visit and experience the wonder of the Aquarium. Se...

This is a remarkable video  about how scientists can use sound to diagnose the health of ecosystems. I highly encourage you to watch it, full screen, with no other windows open to distract you. Listen to what he's saying--it's quite incredible. July 18 was World Listening Day , and lately I have come across a number of sound-related articles , activities , and experiences that have made my ears more attuned to the world around me. Yesterday at camp, we did an activity called Graveyard, which can also be called Sit Spot. Each child and counselor found a space around a pond where they could stay silent and observe. We sat for twenty minutes, using our eyes and ears to become attuned to the pond. Our silence and immobility allowed birds, dragonflies, and frogs to return to the pond as though we weren't there. One camper told me a frog had hopped onto her arm as she sat silently observing its journey around the pond. Dragonflies helicoptered their ways across the water. ...

In my many years of encounters with the performing arts, I had never experienced hip-hop theater before Sunday night when I attended a performance at The 418 Project on Mission Street in downtown Santa Cruz. The theatrical performance, entitled FreeLand , took place during the second half of a benefit evening for Black Mesa/Big Mountain Dine (Navajo) Native residents in northeastern Arizona. I'm hesitant to write about the Black Mesa situation, as I know very little about it. Essentially, the United States has been trying to relocate the Dine people for thirty or so years in order to access coal deposits under their homes. It's highly controversial, and these people have refused to leave their land. A group of people working with the Black Mesa Indigenous Support group is caravanning to the Black Mesa/Big Mountain reservation this month to provide support to the people who live there. I'm going to research the situation so I have a better understanding of what happened and...

In December, my friend Alexys and I spent some time at my family's cabin in the mountains. She taught me some Miwok words and I created a picture book that incorporates the words so I can better learn some of the language. Since then, I've learned some more words and have written many new words from various California tribes (Maidu, Konkow, Nisenan, etc.) in a language and culture journal I'm keeping. Here are the pages that I made in December. I hope to make more soon. watu: sun, lama: tree, oha: woman, nanga: man, kiky: water, lapisay: fish, ohnem: to fish, haju: dog nowehkowai: I love you, ohnem : to fish, nawa: love Alexys drew this one. honon : bear, funawa : laughter Learn how to count in Miwok using this picture. If I make more, I will post them. Thanks for reading! Happy Monday. Green Gal

Imagine the San Francisco Bay Area during the most recent Ice Age at the end of the Pleistocene epoch: a lush, green valley that San Francisco Bay now fills; coasts that extend 12 feet farther into the sea than they currently do; abundant wildlife and megafaunal mammals, like mastodons, short-faced bears, camels, llamas, saber-tooth cats, and mammoths; new human inhabitants who are fortunate enough to happen upon this eden of life, but unfortunate enough to have to deal with the fierce short-faced bears and cats that are larger-than-life and deadly. I just watched an 11-minute segment from KQED Quest about the Bay Area during the Ice Age. It centered on these unique "rubbing rocks" along the Sonoma Coast. These boulders, the narrator says, tell an "ancient story." There is some polish on these rocks that was not created by wind, water or other geologic causes, and some of the polish is found 10-12 feet above the ground, indicating that it was made by something large...

"Be careful whom you call a Neanderthal. You may be one yourself. Or at least you may have Neanderthal ancestors. That's the conclusion of a study being released Thursday that examined DNA extracted from Neanderthal bones more than 35,000 years old." I read this article saying to myself, well duh, haven't they read Jean M. Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear and the Earth's Children series? Her book includes relations between the neanderthals and modern man. If you haven't read that series, I highly recommend it! Check out the NPR article on the subject here: "Hey Good Lookin': Early Humans Dug Neanderthals" by Joe Palca . Notice that one of the geneticists mentioned in the article is now working at UC Santa Cruz. Yeah Santa Cruz!

For the second year in a row, I found myself in my city's council chambers with many peers, government employees, principals, school district employees, teachers, and others, waiting for Youth in Government Day to officially begin. A continental breakfast of bagels, muffins, juice and coffee had welcomed us in the lobby, and the room was packed with people. Julie Duncan, Coordinator of the Career & Technical Education and Apprenticeship Program for our school district, started off the day by talking about Youth in Government Day. For about fifteen years this program has taken place to bring high school students into the everyday work life of government and school district employees. This year there was a record number of student participants and employees to be shadowed. After introductions from the city manager and the school district superintendent, each student stood up and said their name, grade, school and their aspirations in life. There were quite a variety of aspiration...

Lately, my favorite thing to watch on TV has been Ken Burn's National Parks: America's Best Idea series. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to catch it when it's actually on TV, but many days I end up watching it On Demand. Last night, the only episode On Demand was one I've already seen, so I scanned through the other History & Nature shows on the Comcast On Demand menu and saw that there was something from PBS Nova called "Megabeasts' Sudden Death." I opened it to read the description and was so incredibly excited! It was an episode about the new theory of what killed off the megafauna (like mammoth, mastodon, giant sloth) at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, right around the time of the last ice age. If you recall, I wrote an entire research paper on this subject for my English class earlier this year, so I was very eager to watch the show. Short-faced bear and other animals, with mastodons in the background. It focused on the new evidence that a com...