Living Lightly
By
LILLIAN VALLEE
This morning I am going to a
native plant sale. Anyone who has traveled hundreds of miles to buy hard-to-find
natives relishes getting them locally. Native plants (and books) are my undoing,
and I am beginning to show signs of serious addiction: I fake nonchalance as I
smuggle the contraband past my preoccupied spouse. Today my enabler is River
Road Nursery from Escalon, and I come home with a car full of buttery yellow
bush lupine, delicate columbine, silvery mugwort and wild ginger. The mood is
convivial. The sale is combined with an open house at the Great Valley Museum of
Natural History, corner of Stoddard and College, and is held in the museum’s
vibrant native plant garden, barely a toddler in plant years but already a
magnet for admirers and a few less noble souls who come to dig up plants they
cannot find elsewhere.
The congenial museum staff is
setting up tables, putting out displays, and introducing children to natural
delights: Tana Dennen, who runs the museum’s nature shop, has organized a
butterfly-making table; Louise Crawford sits next to colorful packets of
wildflower seeds and has all the materials for those who want to pot a few
Chinese houses or golden poppies; and Gail Clark is showing everyone the first
clusters of native grape on the vine, the rare white poppies, and the hole left
behind by the soaproot thieves.
I love being here and I love
these people because they are the best and most generous people I know, but I
can’t stay: I have to finish this column, a plea for our community to value
the Great Valley Museum of Natural History, the hearth and heart of nature and
science literacy in Stanislaus county since 1980.
The passage of Measure E
convinced many museum advocates (who voted for the measure) that the museum,
administered jointly with Modesto Junior College, would now be able to leave its
temporary housing of 25 years (the
Museum Annex) and occupy more spacious and effective quarters. Museum advocates
were sorely disappointed to learn of the Yosemite Community College District’s
decision to rank the Great Valley Museum a low priority in the Tentative Bond
Time Line and to make it a Phase 4 funding project for 2014-16. Many wonder if
there will be any funding at all for the museum at that date.
With its tours, traveling
teachers, special exhibits, programs and facilities, the museum serves from
30,000-50,000 county residents, mostly children, annually. This includes 160
schools and 33 towns in Stanislaus County. Retired MJC biology instructor and
museum board member, Lynn Hansen, who has developed two outstanding science
curricula (focused on the Tuolumne River and local vernal pools) for elementary
school teachers, sees the museum’s teacher training programs as a long-term
recruitment tool which will eventually deliver nature/science literate young
people to the college.
It would take many more words
than I am allotted here to explain how the Museum has helped make me feel at
home in the Central Valley and how it has taught me to teach others—often from
faraway places—to feel at home here, too. One of its most important lessons
has been that knowledge about place and all its residents—vegetable, animal,
and human—is a powerful, reconciling force among people of diverse
backgrounds. In the two decades I have lived here, the museum has been the
single most instructive resource for me, personally and professionally. These
“Rivers of Birds” columns in Stanislaus
Connections would never have been written without the museum’s many
illuminations; my college courses would not have their regional,
multidisciplinary flavor (or that occasional live snake or tortoise in the
classroom); and I would not have spent the last ten years as a tree-planting,
hemlock-chopping volunteer helping to restore some of the wilder features of the
Valley’s identity. The museum’s educational impacts are permanent.
In the early nineties I
enrolled in the museum’s excellent docent training program, run then by Pat
Childress. As docents-in-training, we studied the various Central Valley
ecosystems, observed live salamanders, toads, or raptors, and learned all about
the natural and human history of the Central Valley through museum-sponsored
field trips to many of the state parks and federal refuges. We learned the
plants, ate acorn soup and handled snakes, tortoises, owls, and tarantulas. (I
can still see the amusement on student faces when three strapping football
players bolted for the exit when I drew a king snake out of a pillowcase.) We
practiced speaking to children and adults of all ages about the creatures they
could still encounter: migrating Sandhill cranes and salmon, alligator lizards,
kingfishers and hoary bats. The landscape became rich with voices. A question
became an adventure.
I noted that college students
who learned to value the place they lived in, learned to love the world and
gained a sense of their power in it, whether that translated into planting a
tree or writing a poem. This knowledge led to keener observation and enjoyment.
Nature literacy is the potent act of reclaiming a primal tongue, the language
that preceded all others, the deep tap-root of poetry. And while the museum may
be best known for its science and professional development programs, the biggest
surprise may be the way a natural history museum acts on the imagination:
to reconstruct a regional history from a topographical map, habitat cases, or a
display with early tools and exquisitely woven baskets is to exercise the
imagination in consort with fragments of other histories, a habit critical to an
informed and nourishing life.
ACTION:
A museum’s prime resource is the moral and financial support of people who
believe in its mission. Write a love letter about the Great Valley Museum of
Natural History at this critical juncture in its history and tell how your
experience with the museum has enriched your life in Stanislaus County. Tell the
chancellor why the museum is essential to the ecological and intellectual
vitality of our community and why it should be given higher priority in YCCD’s
construction schedule.
Send your letter to Chancellor
James H. Williams, Yosemite Community College District, P.O. Box 4065, Modesto
95352 or email: williamsjh@yosemite.cc.ca.us
Lillian Vallee is a Professor of Literature and Language Arts at Modesto Junior College.
By JASON MARK
California has a history of setting trends. Whether you live in Sacramento, New Mexico, or Sacramento, Pennsylvania, chances are that policy makers in Sacramento, California have helped clean your air. The golden State has a 40 year history of precedent-setting air pollution policies that have accelerated the pace of technology innovation. And, as the fifth largest economy in the world, California’s actions can drive global progress.
California’s clean air leadership was borne out of necessity. The state has been a laboratory for the causes and effects of air pollution. Yet, nine out of ten Californians still breathe air that does not meet federal health guidelines.
For the magnitude of its health problems, California has been given special authority under the U.S. Clean Air Act to make its own vehicle pollution standards more stringent than the federal government’s. No other state has such powers. The state set standards that have later been adopted by federal regulators.
California’s tailpipe rules are the most stringent in the world when it comes to smog-forming pollution and the most aggressive in pushing new technologies to market (such as hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles and the future’s zero-emission fuel cell vehicles).
Stopping Climate Change at the Source
Using its special authority to regulate motor vehicles, California is now crafting the first-ever standards to directly limit motor vehicles’ emissions of heat-trapping gases. Starting in model year 2009, the state will limit such emissions from new motor vehicles and set progressively tighter standards over time.
The new emissions standards can be readily duplicated by other states around the country. As more states follow California’s lead, the pressure will build for national action—either driving automakers to voluntarily sell cars that met California standards in all 50 states (as was the case in the late 1990’s) or driving the federal government to finally address the heat-trapping emissions released by motor vehicles.
Automakers are likely to challenge California’s rules in court, arguing that the state has overstepped its authority to set pollution standards. California, however, has a solid legal case: it is simply working to protect the health and welfare of its citizens.
Protecting the Public’s Health
California is also working to reduce the most harmful air pollutant from heavy-duty diesel engines: particulate matter, or soot. The soot released by freight trucks, buses, and construction and agricultural equipment can cause severe respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses, chronic bronchitis, cancer, and premature death.
Regulations call for dramatic reductions in diesel soot during the coming decade, but incentive programs can also play a key role. The state created the landmark Carl Moyer program to provide businesses with financing for the cleanup of old engines. The money has already yielded significant financial and public health benefits (see Sick of Soot: Reducing the Health Impacts of Diesel Pollution in California, in pdf format at www.ucsusa.org.
(Edited by Myrtle Osner from Catalyst, Fall 2004, the magazine of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
By INDIRA CLARK
Central Valley farmer and author of Epitaph
for Peach David “Mas” Masumoto will speak at the Heartland Festival at
the Double T Acres, an organic dairy, off Hwy. 140 in Stevinson (outside Turlock
in Merced County), May 21-22, 2005.
Saturday’s schedule includes farm and garden
workshops, a craft village for kids, renewable energy showcase, farmers’
market, arts and crafts booth in addition to The Central Valley Chautauqua
featuring Masumoto, music, poetry, and folkdancing. Farm-style feasting and
local wine-tasting will fill out the day and evening. Camping is available.
A river walk, birdwatching, kayak demo, u-pick organic
cherries and blueberries, organic dairy tours, a milk taste-off, and nature
crafts will be offered Sunday.
This is the sixth annual Heartland Festival sponsored
by the Ecological Farming Association.
ACTION: For more
information or to volunteer to help, call (831) 763-2111; visit www.eco-farm.org/heartland/hrt_pages/hrt05_home.html
or email info@eco-farm.org.
Water-wise gardening
By MYRTLE OSNER
For many homeowners, the space around their house is as important as the space inside. Indeed, millions of dollars are spent each year keeping lawns neat, healthy, and green. Lawn care doesn’t just require money, it requires water — a lot of water, About one-third of outdoor water use in the U.S. goes toward lawn care according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (probably a greater percentage in our area).1
In Modesto, we are building another water treatment plant because our present system is maxed out, and much of it failing. This means we must raise water rates and start using meters (which act as an incentive to save water. When your bill suddenly doubles you might think twice before watering so often).
I have long advocated getting rid of the front lawn, which is almost sacrosanct in California. You might think about what happens in Portland, Oregon, a very green city, but one which is fed by frequent rain. When the rain fails, summer watering is taboo up there, and the grass turns brown, just like our “green and gold” hills surrounding us here. When it rains, it greens up again. Their water system simply hasn’t enough water in it to keep the lawns green in a drought.
And ours doesn’t either, if we really think about it. The Central Valley is a desert in summer. We should be planting drought resistant shrubs or native ground covers. Granted, they aren’t much good if you like your back yard to be a playground. But it is possible to cut back on lawn watering if you set the lawn mower higher, as the longer grass shades the soil. Some grass varieties are drought resistant.
And, best of all, cut back on the amount of lawn you have by looking at what you really use. Plant some native groundcovers in the areas where you don’t really need lawns like Zauschneria, one of the most tenacious, and it blooms in fall. I’ll give you starts if you come over to my house. Check the native plant garden at the Great Valley Museum, Stoddard and College Ave, Modesto. Gail Clark’s in charge.
1. earthwise, Union of Concerned Scientists, Spring 2005.
