Green Gal

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.

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...

It's raining in Santa Cruz this morning. Outside is foggy and wet, while I'm nice and warm in my dorm room. Perfect for story time! Last Wednesday, I received an email from a woman who works with the Natural History Museum in Santa Cruz. I had learned about the museum while searching online, and was planning on riding my bike there on Thursday anyway, so her timing was perfect. She'd come across my blog and thought I'd be interested in volunteering and helping with a project. She wrote, You might want to consider volunteering with us. We are going to be creating an Ohlone garden with CA native plants that grow locally and were used for food, dye, basketry, medicine. So we need to make a list of such plants and their uses. Any help you might give us would be appreciated. Let me know if you would like to work on such a list. Of course, I told her I'm interested, so I met with her on Thursday when I visited. She gave me a tour of the Ohlone exhibit in the museum, which...

Lower Campus this morning Earlier this quarter, I was looking through the Recreation guide for interesting classes or workshops to register for and I came across an Herbology class through the Holistic Health Program. I am fascinated by ethnobotany--how different cultures use or have used plants, both medicinally and in general--so this class appealed to me immensely. My family and I have been utilizing holistic medicine (homeopathy, accupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine) since I was a child, so the class appealed to me as something I'm familiar with. I signed up for the three-day class and looked forward to learning about herbology in a more detailed and formal way than I had ever before. Thursday was the first day of the class, and I took about 15 pages of notes in my small green notebook from 6-9 PM about a bunch of different plants and their uses, the history of herbology, what the difference between food, herbs and pharmaceuticals is, and what questions to ask when identifyin...

On Saturday, I returned home from a little more than a week of vacation in the Sierra Nevada mountains. I had an interesting and enjoyable time venturing around Twain Harte, Sonora, Columbia, Murphys and Pinecrest. Here's a brief recap of the first few days of vacation: Thursday, July 1 I drove up with my grandparents and their dog Simba. We stopped at their favorite pie stand along Highway 120, at Jack Tone Road. My grandma bought two frozen cherry pies and a cantaloupe. My mom and sister surprised everyone by showing up past dark at my aunt's cabin that evening! That night, my cousins and I slept on the deck on cots, under the stars. I woke up to birds chirping and their dog Chester barking. Delightful! Friday, July 2 My cousins Ben and Nick, my cousin Ryan, his friends and I hiked around Pinecrest Lake , a moderate hike of 4 miles. Ben set a quick pace and we soon lost Ryan and his friends. It was a great hike that definitely pushed me, which is good since I'm going BA...

I always forget that I know how to draw and that I actually enjoy it. When I was little I drew like crazy, but as I got older I drew less and less. Every once in a while I draw something and remember that I can. It's not that I can draw really well (as my sister PawPrint can), but I can at least get my point across sufficiently. So yesterday after I posted the drawings I'd made in December , I thought I might as well take pencil to paper and make another addition to my Miwok Picture Language Book. I brought my Native American and Miwok books downstairs to our coffee table and began sketching, looking up words and images when needed. I copied the roundhouse from a drawing in a book published through Columbia Junior College called "Miwok" that Alexys's grandmother let me borrow. I collected the words from various sources: Alexys's knowledge of the Miwok language, the internet , Deeper Than Gold , the "Miwok" book, and a pamphlet from the Stanislaus Na...

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

Photo from the book Deeper Than Gold On Friday afternoon, my family drove up to Nevada County to visit my step-mom's parents in Grass Valley. Saturday morning we drove to Empire Mine State Park for a family portrait. I had never been to Empire Mine before, but unfortunately we didn't really get a chance to look around. We took the portrait on the well-manicured grounds and walked around the gift shop. While looking at the interesting rocks and knick-knacks in the shop, I spotted some carved rock hippos, which happen to be my sister 's favorite animal of all time (no doubt, pictures of the various hippos she acquired this weekend will appear on her hippo blog soon!). Surprisingly, they had a variety of different stone hippos for her to choose from. She bought a pink-colored rhodonite one. I found some bear fetishes carved from various stones with a description about what they signify. Bears are my favorite animals. The first time I saw a bear was while hiking with my dad ...

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...