Green Gal

"Our True Heritage" by Thich Nhat Hanh The cosmos is filled with precious gems. I want to offer a handful of them to you this morning. Each moment you are alive is a gem, shining through and containing earth and sky, water and clouds. It needs you to breathe gently for the miracles to be displayed. Suddenly you hear the birds singing, the pines chanting, see the flowers blooming, the blue sky, the white clouds, the smile and the marvelous look of your beloved. You, the richest person on Earth, who have been going around begging for a living, stop being the destitute child. Come back and claim your heritage. We should enjoy our happiness and offer it to everyone. Cherish this very moment. Let go of the stream of distress and embrace life fully in your arms. -- Thank you to my friend Collette for sharing this. Collette has a wonderful blog about Deep Nature Connection at www.awakeningwild.com . For more inspiration, visit her site!

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. ...

It's only the second day of nature camp, and as a counselor I have already spent many hours of my free time after work studying things that I have missed so much during the past school year of papers and assigned readings... Last night, I studied Ohlone culture for an hour or two, taking notes for a lesson that I am facilitating on Friday about technology (mortar and pestle, bow and arrow, nets, snares, hot rocks, etc.), the natural landscape as it was 200 years ago in my hometown and surrounding area, and medicinal and useful plants. These are topics I avidly studied in high school on my own, back when I had more free time. Once I create the lesson plan for Friday, perhaps I'll post it here so others can use it, too. Tonight, I spent some time re-reading the biography of Opal Whiteley, an inspiring American nature enthusiast and writer who at the age of 5 began writing a nature diary in the woods near her home in Oregon. She was a remarkable person, and I remember being ve...

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.

I was pleasantly surprised to come home this evening to find a new comment on my blog, alerting me that I had been nominated for the Sunshine Award by Canopy Avenue ! I was delighted and honored, as well as excited because when receiving this award, you are given the task to nominate 10 more blogs for the award! Here are the award tasks: 1. If you are nominated, you must blog a post linking back to the person/blog that nominated you. 2. You must answer some questions, nominate ten fellow bloggers and link their blogs to the post! 3. You should comment on your nominees’ blogs to let them know you’ve nominated them. Here are the questions: 1. Who is your favorite philosopher? Today, Martin Heidegger because I'm reading him in a class in college right now, and because he wrote this: "The threat to man does not come in the first instance from the potentially lethal machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat has already affected man in his essence. The ...

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...

On Thursday, I celebrated my 18th birthday as well as the 40th anniversary of the first Earth Day in 1970. My mom took me hiking in the morning since school didn't start until 10:40 (thank you STAR testing!). At lunch, my Environmental Club had an Earth Day party and we ate leftover popcorn and had cookies from the night before when we'd shown the film FLOW to the public--at least 100 students attended (most for extra credit) and the event was a huge success. Thursday evening, my family went out to dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant and then at 7:00, we all attended a lecture titled "Sustainability: Then and Now." The City Naturalist Eric Nicholas spoke about how sustainbility was a necessary aspect of life for the Ohlone people who once lived in this abundant valley we now call home. (For more information about the event, see this article: Pleasanton Take Steps toward Sustainability .) After the event, we went home for vegan, gluten-free cake and some prese...

As Spring really takes hold, with rainy days (like today) and then hot, sunny days that feel like summer, I'm getting excited for the end of the school year and for my post-high school adventures. Spring is always a rapid season in the school year, with testing and finals in classes speeding things along and then before you know it, the year's over. I realized this morning that it is the birthday of John Muir, the famous naturalist writer, among other things he was. I don't know if this was done on purpose, but I find it perfect that his birthday is the day before Earth Day. I also think it's something like fate that my birthday is tomorrow, on Earth Day. I didn't really even realize this fact consciously until I started becoming something of an environmentalist and nature-enthusiast myself. My good friend Blue was the first person to tell me "Happy B-Earth Day." I'm glad he was the first to do so, because he's one of the people I was close friends...

Alviso Adobe Community Park "Tools from the Ancient World" Practicing with the atlatl and spear Earth Hour March 27, 2010 8:30pm-9:30pm my cousin Patsy, the newest member of our family --- Miwok Fact of the Day : In traditional Miwok culture, when a village decided to have a dance, the lead elder (white people have named these people "chiefs," though the Native Americans did not refer to them by this name) of the village, would send messengers to surrounding villages to invite them. Each messenger would carry a string with a certain number of knots tied along it. The lead elder of the villages that had been invited would untie one knot each day after receiving the invitation. Once the last knot had been untied, the invited village people--men, women and children--traveled to the host village for the dance. This reminds me of an Advent calendar with the chocolates in the windows, or a modern-day online countdown timer. I'm trying this for my next party! (Powe...

Today I spoke with a woman from the admissions department at Prescott College in Arizona. She informed me that I've been accepted to the school, and that I'm being given some scholarships! I would love to go to Prescott, but it is the first place I've heard from so for now I can't say whether or not I'll end up actually going there. It is an expensive school and it's far away, but I am so glad to know I got in! I'd like to share with you the essay I applied with: Before I could even speak, my dad read to me—poems, stories, T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare. After much practice, I had the “To be or not to be” soliloquy mostly memorized by age seven. In the community college English class my dad teaches, he shows a tape of seven-year-old me donning a black turtleneck, sitting in a rocking chair, and reciting Hamlet’s famous lines about contemplating “that sleep of death.” My dad says it’s his favorite film version of the scene. Years later, my dream job was to be an E...

My college applications are all in. Transcripts have been requested. Essays are tucked away in files that I will not look at until next April when I won't stress if I left out a comma. The college application process is sure a journey, but I know the destination will be worth it. I have at least three weeks until I find out from anyone--but most likely it will be months before I hear back. I have to file my FAFSA, and then I just wait by the door for that letter. And now, for a list of where I applied... UC Irvine San Francisco State University Sonoma State University Rocky Mountain College University of San Francisco My major of choice for most is anthropology, but for some schools that don't have anthropology or have a stronger environmental studies program, I applied to major in environmental studies. Prescott is one of those places where the environment is already part of the school's philosophy, and if I went there, I would want to study to become a naturalist because ...

I have found that walking can slow down time, force you to live at a slower pace for a bit and make you aware of your surroundings. Driving is so fast and so much about what's next, where you're going, how fast you can get there. Walking is about the journey, or at least it lends itself to be. I've been walking to and from school when I've had time and it's a lovely mode of transportation when you can slow down and appreciate your environment. Part of my walk home takes me through a park which I have been in thousands of times but have never truly slowed down to appreciate. When I ride my bike, I have hardly enough time to appreciate the sunlight on the leaves, the curve of the paths, the bark on the various trees or the hills and dips of the grassy knolls. Walking offers you quiet time to think and observe. It creates a sense of place. Fall 2006, A picture I took at the local pumpkin farm. Reduce Footprints's Change the World Wednesday challenge for this ...