Green Gal

This morning I had the pleasure of interviewing Lily Urmann, my dear friend and fellow UCSC sustainabilibuddy graduate. We spoke about one of her favorite favorite subjects: Biomimicry. The Biomimicry Institute describes biomimicry as "an approach to innovation that seeks sustainable solutions to human challenges by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies. The goal is to create products, processes, and policies—new ways of living—that are well-adapted to life on earth over the long haul. The core idea is that nature has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. After billions of years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival." Lily is fully immersed in the study and development of programs related to biomimicry at Arizona State University. The work of the Biomimicry Center at ASU is at the forefront of biomimicry educati...

Happy Giving Tuesday! If you haven't already, I invite you to please support an important cause led by four of my dear friends from the UCSC Farm Apprenticeship! They are raising funds to support a more sustainable food system in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. They have raised 75% of their $17,500 goal; help them get to 100% ! They write, "After learning that 80% of crop value has been wiped out, we think supporting our agroecological family in Puerto Rico is the best way we can contribute. We want to contribute to farmers, seed savers, and food justice organizers who believe in growing methods that do not use pesticides, that rebuild the soil, that attract beneficial insects, that grow healthy food, that believe that access to locally grown food is a RIGHT that everyone should have on the island (and around the world.)" Please watch this video to learn more and hear directly from my four inspiring friends and fellow members of the Center for Agroecology ...

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. ...

I have been visiting the Alviso Adobe Community Park in Pleasanton, CA, since it opened in 2008. This video documents my amazing journey of learning experiences there, and it also serves as a way to share about the park's history and beauty. I have written a lot on this blog about my experiences at the park. Please click here to view those posts.

This week, I took Beth Terry (of MyPlasticFreeLife.com )'s  Show Your Plastic Challenge . I met Beth last Sunday at a lecture she gave for Science Sundays at the Seymour Center at Long Marine lab, and I was inspired to be more conscious of plastic in my life and begin the process of living without it. You can read a little about Beth and the lecture that I attended  here . I purchased a copy of Beth's book at the lecture last Sunday, and I am LOVING it. She has not only great resources and facts about plastic, but she also includes practical solutions. I will be writing more about her book in future posts. The challenge is to " Collect all of your own plastic waste, both recyclable and non, for a minimum of one week ." I tried my best to do the challenge this past week, but I went home for the weekend (I spend most of the year on campus at UC Santa Cruz) and lost track of a few of the plastic items that I used while out to lunch with family. I also didn't pr...

It's already Wednesday, and I just haven't had the time to update the blog since Monday, which fortunately means I've been busy exploring the opportunities of the conference and the campus! I've attended many workshops, learned some great take-aways, and have spent some time exploring the UC Davis campus. For now, I'll take a step back and return to Monday evening's activities, and later this week, I'll write about the workshops I've attended. The California Higher Education Sustainability Conference kicked off Monday night with keynote speaker Dr. Mitchell Thomashow, who spoke about the Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus. Click here for a written document about the nine elements, or watch a video from a different event on the same topic, below: One of the major take-aways that I learned from his keynote address was that "How we act is how we live," meaning that the ways in which we live day to day make up our life, not the ...

Need another reason to recycle? Sometimes it's easier to just toss a recyclable into a nearby trashcan than to wait until you find a recycling bin, but here's a good reason to wait and dispose of it properly: "Paper takes up 40-50 percent of the volume in American landfills. Despite the growing commitment to local recycling programs, the amount of paper is steadily rising--up from 35 percent in 1970. The rest of a landfill consists of in descending order of volume, construction/demolition debris, metals, plastics, other materials, food and yard waste, and glass." That quote is from my Archaeology textbook, Archaeology: Down to Earth by Robert L. Kelly and David Hurst Thomas (4th edition, published 2011 by Wadsworth CENGAGE Learning). A lot of the stuff listed there is recyclable and shouldn't even be in the landfill. We could save a whole lot of space for actual garbage by recycling things that are recyclable--especially paper! On another note, in core class toda...

Sabore, a Maasai warrior I met two years ago (Photo credit: Asante Africa ) Today in AP Human Geography, my friends and I presented our end-of-the-year project. We chose the African country of Kenya because my good friend Taylor visited Kenya last summer with her church, so she knew a bit about the culture already. As it turns out, I too know a bit about the culture, having read about the nomadic pastoral lifestyle practiced by many Kenyan people in Man on Earth by John Reader. I also met a Maasai warrior named Sabore and a teacher named Hellen from Kenya at a presentation by Asante Africa at my school two years ago. At the presentation, I purchased a hand-made bracelet and a piece of cloth which is typically worn as clothing. I use it as a table cloth in my room (see it in pictures on this blog post ). Here is the video of Hellen Nkuraiya (see it on the Asante Africa website here ): To prepare for our presentation, yesterday Taylor and I made Kenyan chapati, a type of fr...

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...

We're learning about externalities, or costs of production that affect people who have no control over how much of a good is produced. So far this semester, we've watched a lot of environmentally-related 60 Minutes videos, which I find interesting considering it's an economics class. Economy vs. environment, for sure. This is the video we watched in class today: (Click here if you can't see the above video.) Makes me wonder where my e-waste ends up... Green Gal

It's National Agriculture Day and the First Day of Spring! All week, I've been posting blog entries to my Environmental Club's blog with agriculture facts. Check it out here . We owe the basis for our society's knowledge about agriculture to the first farmers of ancient civilizations who settled down and began experimenting with plant foods. See the below image of the major agricultural regions of the ancient world. Here is some more information. For more information on the origins of agriculture, watch this video: For every person who has ever lived there has come, at last, a spring he will never see. Glory then in the springs that are yours. -- Pam Brown

I used to watch Rocko's Modern Life on Nickelodeon when I was growing up. Nickelodeon used to have the BEST shows and I've had so many conversations about how the new Nick is lame compared to the Nick of our childhood. KaBlam!, Aaahh! Real Monsters, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, All That, Clarissa Expains It All, Doug, Rug Rats, The Wild Thornberries, The Secret World of Alex Mac... the list goes on. There's even a website dedicated to '90s Nickelodeon . But here's a video with a song from Rocko's Modern Life that was a hit in my household. We used to sing this song all the time. Somehow, we got the tune a little off over the years, so when I found this video and watched it with my family, we tried to sing it the right way. I still like our version because it's easier :) I thought it was interesting that the focus of this song is the ozone layer, which I recall being the big environmental issue growing up. In elementary school science classes, we learned abou...

In Human Geography this year, we talked about ethnicity and how ethnicity is something we identify for ourselves. I had never really thought about my ethnicity, other than being white and American, so I started thinking about my heritage and which aspect of it I identify most with. I'm Norweigan, German, French, and, ah yes, Irish. I don't really celebrate anything German, Norweigan or French, but I definitely do celebrate my Irish heritage. So I decided that I consider myself American and Irish, if anyone were to ask me. I love St. Patrick's Day, especially the traditions my family has in celebrating it. Today I decked out in my green shorts, t-shirt and shamrock earrings and told everyone I could that I'm Irish. I wish my last name was Irish, like my friends with last names like O'Leary and McGuinness. I told them that my grandparents are Daleys, which is definitely Irish. Anyway, every St. Patty's Day, my family has dinner at my grandparents house, the side f...

Water conservation was the theme of this week's Change the World Wednesday Challenge . "This week, when using the faucet, turn it on at a trickle instead of full blast. Simple, right?" I generally try to do this anyway, but this week I tried to be extra conscious. Brushing my teeth, washing my hands, washing my face, washing vegetables--for all of these things I tried to turn the sink on to only a trickle. Sure, it takes a few more seconds to get enough water for whatever you're doing, but it's not enough time that it's infeasible. I noticed that the kitchen sink is the faucet that most often gets blasted. Waiting for hot water, washing vegetables and washing plates each end up wasting a lot of water because of the high-blast faucet issue. I noticed the water issue most when I was doing homework and my parents were using the sink. It was almost always at full blast. It's just a matter of reminding people, I think, until it becomes a habit. I instinctiv...

I can't wait to watch Food Revolution once it airs! This is a long video, but definitely worth watching!

For my post about Youth in Government Day 2010 Part I, read here . Following lunch on Tuesday, all students and the adults they were shadowing headed over to the school district offices to break into focus groups. This year's topic for the Youth Commission is "Life Balance," which can be described as how we manage to live with just the right amount of work and play, and the issues we sometimes face in trying to do so. Someone in my focus group mentioned Yin and Yang, which is a perfect way to explain it. The topics of discussion under Life Balance were Friends, Family, School and Extra-Curricular Activities. My focus group talked about School. We started off by writing down on post-it notes our personal concerns about the four topics. Volunteers shared their ideas and then we posted the notes on different butcher paper sheets. Then we focused in on School. My first concern was the issue of teachers assigning homework over the weekend and during breaks. I made the argument...