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Showing posts from November, 2007

Calendar additions: fill your mind

If you stuffed your belly last week, fill your mind over the course of the next two weeks. Here are two more events. Thursday, November 30 12 pm - 1:30 pm, Morgan Hall Lounge (UC Berkeley campus) Green Collar Jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area: Can the green economy reduce global warming and fight poverty? Raquel Rivera Pinderhughes, Professor of Urban Studies, San Francisco State University Ian Kim, Reclaim the Future Director, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights Sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Social Change, UC Berkeley Labor Center, and the College of Natural Resources. Sunday, December 9 3 pm - 6 pm, Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall (Cedar at Bonita) A celebration of community activists Karl Linn and Louise Dunlap Thanks to Eric Broder for the event information! Read more about Karl Linn's book , Building Commons and Community .

Calendar: Weeks of Nov. 29 - Dec. 3, 2007

Thursday, November 29 7pm The Legacy of Berkeley Parks: A Century of Planning and Making Marcia McNally, Sadie Graham, and Louise Mozingo (UC Berkeley, Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning professor, graduate student, and professor)* Berkeley Art Center, Live Oak Park, 125 Walnut Street Tuesday, December 4 5:30 pm - 7 pm A Camera Aloft: California’s Wetlands and Streams from a Bird’s Perspective Charles Benton, UC Berkeley Professor of Architecture Wurster Hall 112 Sponsored by the Water Resources Center Archives . Wednesday, December 5 7:30 pm - 9 pm Honoring Our Peacetime Veterans: The New Deal Legacy in Berkeley's Parks and Recreational Facilities Gray Brechin, PhD and author of Imperial San Francisco Live Oak Park Center Theatre, 1201 Shattuck Avenue Sponsored by Berkeley Partners for Parks/ BPFP ($5 - $10 benefit at the door). Contact BPFP or me for more details. Thursday, December 6 5:30 - 7:30pm Combating Gentrification and Displacem

Vacant lots: weeds and seed-eating birds

Vacant lots are not so much vacant (= empty) as disinvested, by humans. In the wonderful children's book, The City Kid's Field Guide , published by WGBH Boston, Ethan Herberman wrote, Is there any place in the city where the wildlife lives undisturbed? How about a so-called vacant lot? Today's Chronicle reported on the housing development that will replace 14-acres of abandoned Japanese American greenhouses in Richmond. I wrote about this project in a discussion of local nurseries as green open space . In that post I noted that the existing vegetation at the greenhouse site did not provide any psychological satisfactions for me, but it is a source of food for seed-eating birds like sparrows and juncos. The Chronicle reporter noted that while preservationists and developers debate the final design of the 14-acre project, the tough, persistent rosebushes, [that have] gone wild over a decade of neglect, climb toward the glass ceilings, putting out fragrant blossoms. Spa

The world with(out) us

The World Without Us was the title of the first hour of today's Science Friday on NPR. It is also the title of a book by Alan Weisman . Weisman argues that if humans disappeared from Earth, the NYC subway system would flood, power plants would run out of coolant or melt (which would have serious consequences), cockroaches would become extinct in northern climates (they rely on heat to survive winters), rats would also face difficult times with the disappearance of human refuse, raptors would increase in numbers due to increases in woodland cover (and prey on the rats), agricultural fields would undergo succession, and "carrots would revert to Queen Anne's Lace." How interesting! Weisman also talked about things that will remain, like plastic: "all the plastic that has been made is still is there - it's just in smaller bits." I was listening to show as I ran some errands this morning. Going out into Berkeley this morning, the sidewalks and streets wer

Rocky connection: Berkeley and Thanksgiving

The City of Berkeley was named by Frederick Billings while he stood at Founder's Rock in 1866. One of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the U.S. was in Plymouth, MA in 1621. The town of Plymouth was found at the landing site of the Mayflower, Plymouth Rock . Source: Wikimedia Commons; Wikipedia

Tree Walk Wednesday: 2200 Block of Ward Street

My first visit to the History Room at the Berkeley Public Library was to read the Interim Tree Planting Notebook , 2000. In the notebook, I found a 1999 street tree campaign flyer from the 2200 block of Ward Street. The flyer listed five tree species (with addresses to view mature examples) recommended by the Parks Department for that block: Chinese pistache (Ashby east of College), Trident maple (1804 Grant), Chinese flame (1180 Oxford), Mayten (Shattuck between the French hotel and Bank of America), and Pagoda (2143 Woolsey at Deakin). I toured the 2200 block, but not the locations listed on the flyer.     Looking west on Ward Street   First, most of the newer trees on the block are Chinese pistache. The most mature trees are a linden ( Tilia ), a poplar ( Populus ), and a Zelkova , followed by a red oak ( Quercus rubra ), a London plane tree ( Platanus x acerifolia ), and two (silver?) maples ( Acer ), then a purple leaf plum ( Prunus cerasifera ), an apple ( Malus ), a

Books: water fowl and fouled waters

A bookworm's tribute to the fouled waters and water fowl of the Bay and Pacific.* Source: NOAA public domain image via Wikipedia Commons Children's Fiction Miss Pickerell and the Supertanker Ellen McGregor and Dora Pantell, 1978 Oil Spill! Melvin Berger, 1994 Oliver and the Oil Spill Aruna Chandrasekhar, 1991 One Wing's Gift Joan Harris, 2002 Washing the Willow Tree Loon Jacqueline Briggs Martin, 1995 Guides and References The Basics of Oil Spill Cleanup Merv Fingas, 2000 The Shorebird Guide Michael O'Brien, 2006 Water Birds of California Howard L. Cogswell, 1977 * I saw all titles available at the Berkeley Public Library, except Oliver and the Oil Spill , The Basics of Oil Spill Cleanup , and One Wing's Gift .

Calendar: Week of November 12, 2007

In lieu of a Tree Walk Wednesday post,* here is a calendar of upcoming environmental events. Wednesday, November 14 6 pm - 8 pm Green Cities, Brown Folks Sponsored by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights Saturday, November 17 10 am, meet at 700 Jean Street, Oakland Oakland Paths & Steps Sponsored by Berkeley Path Wanderers Association ( details ) November 17, Saturday 10 am - noon Berkeley’s Downtown Parks: Real, Envisioned, and Vanished Co-sponsored by Berkeley Partners for Parks and the Berkeley Historical Society ( details ) Sunday, November 18 noon - 3pm, at Green City Gallery Seedball Sunday Sponsored by East Nay Permaculture Guild (details here and here ) * I recently read about a 1999 campaign for trees on a block of Ward Street. My intent was to walk the block this evening and post my observations tomorrow. However, darkness descended more swiftly than I could bicycle home. My new goal is to take a walk this Thursday or Friday and prepare the post for

Neighborly acts: public gardens, private art

The two main inspirations for this blog are flora files and neighborly acts. The Tree Walk Wednesday series is an example of a flora file, while the following post illustrates neighborly acts. The big theories about neighboring, as reviewed by Unger and Wandersman (1985), focus on social interaction, neighborhood cognition (or the system you develop to physically and socially navigate your neighborhood), and affective bonds (or how you feel about your neighbors). The "social interaction" component is the most interactive and it accounts for a range of actions, from 'social support which are ordinary social activities that neighbors engage in like borrowing/lending, informal visiting, or asking for help in an emergency to social networks' at the individual or block scale. The traffic circle cum public garden/ arboretum on Webster (see top) is an example of neighboring, or a neighborly act. The installation of a traffic circle requires 65% affirmative votes f

Sludge in the bay and at Aquatic Park

Mulch piles along Aquatic Park shoreline, July 2007 It has been raining since noon. The coastal prairie species planted along the Ohlone Greenway today are welcoming the rain, but not the fish and birds that use Aquatic Park. The City of Berkeley Public Works Department, according to the Berkeley Daily Planet , dumped dredged sludge in a prime feeding area along the park's shoreline. In an interview, Mark Liolios of EGRET (Aquatic Park Environmental Greening, Education, and Restoration Team) stated that "as soon as the rains come the spoils will wash down and any toxic chemicals in it will kill the fish and the birds that feed on it." Compare photographs of the shoreline this summer versus its current condition . With regards to this week's oil spill in the bay, waterfowl have been killed and endangered according to reports by the San Francisco Chronicle . The latest wildlife affected by the spill : crabs; crabbers have delayed the start of the season. Bot

Local nurseries as green open space

For some time I have been considering the idea of nurseries as green open space. It's a fair assumption that current definitions of "open space" do not include this land use type. Urban open space often includes privately-owned open space like university campuses, plazas, and rooftop gardens, so why not include nurseries, greenhouses, and open-air garden centers. The Dry Garden on Shattuck Avenue, Spiral Gardens on Sacramento Street, Berkeley Hort (Berkeley Horticultural Nursery) on McGee, and Cactus Jungle on 4th Street are good examples of nurseries as green open space. Although the plant material at these nurseries are not physically rooted in the soil and they regularly rotate in/out of the nurseries, their presence does provide similar benefits to parks and less temporal green spaces. For example, a nursery could be considered a "specialty park/facility" which Lutzenhiser and Netusil defined as "primarily one use at the park and everything in the

Tree Walk Wednesday: Accoutrements of a new street tree

Only sometimes are the ideas for our posts planned in advance. This week's Tree Walk Wednesday post is a good example. On a recent stroll in Somerville (a city across the Charles from Boston), I walked by several newly planted street trees. The site evoked memories of administering Boston's street tree planting program: reviewing tree requests, selecting trees, watching while the contractors planted the trees, and inspecting the trees several times after they were planted. I was also struck by how different the Somerville trees looked than new street trees I have seen in Berkeley and Oakland. The significant differences are the size (dbh = diameter at breast height) of the tree, the tree gator, and the water & aeration loop. The trees in Somerville are at least 2" in diameter. Nurseries typically use a caliper measure taken 6" above the trunk flare, but other tree professionals calculate tree size by measuring diameter at breast height at approxim

Big green, little green

If you don't watch television, specifically NBC, you might have missed the announcement that this week is "Green is Universal - Green Week" on NBC. Even the company's logo, the multi-colored peacock feathers, is green. Last night's football commentary show was broadcast with candles on, lights off. Many shows that air this week will have a green theme. For example, Al Gore will be a cameo guest on "30 Rock," while David Schwimmer, will star as "Greenzo," a mascot concept created by Alec Baldwin's character, Jack Donaghy. (PG&E's "Let's Green This City" - the city is San Francisco - preceded GE-owned NBC's campaign. The PG&E's campaign has been criticized as corporate green washing .) I don't have enough information to offer an informed opinion about either campaign, but I do know that no television for at least 4 hours a day combined with a light bulb replacement (see below) can save the averag

Reflections on Halloween

Not candy, but treats nevertheless (the doughnuts were baked by Voodoo Doughnut, Portland, Oregon) The cries of "trick or treat" sent me rushing towards the door beckoning to my husband that there were kids on the street. My first Halloween in Berkeley, I had candy, but no children came by. Either the following year or the year after that, children came to our door, but we had forgotten to buy candy. One year we purposefully did not participate in All Hallow's Eve. This year, we bought candy and children came to the door. One set of children to be exact; a mother came down our drive accompanying her four sons. My Halloween experiences contrast starkly with the neighborhoods west and northwest of mine. On a short run last night, we saw lots of trick or treating activity, decorated homes, and costumed groups on their way to parties. I live in census tract 4236-02. There are 5,047 individuals in my census tract, of which 152 (or 2.6%) are age 9 and under. In con