in Between

I have actually registered a blog at blogspot, but i’m working on the game plan. I’ll let you know.

Nat and I just returned from a week in the woods, water, and mountains of Washington (state.) We spent most of our time in and around the Olympic Penninsula. What a spectacular place! It was the best camping vacation we’ve had in a while. What makes a good camping trip for two semi-over-worked, slightly lazier than in years past, eager to keep busy folks like us? Here’s my list of Olympic’s best:

1. Campgrounds…there are so many great, cheap (some are even free!) spread throughout the Penninsula. All but one of the National Park campgrounds is first-come-first-served, so we were able to find a site easily every night, most of them absolutely gorgeous…two nights on rivers, one on the beach, a few in the forest. There iare a lot of options for backcountry camping, too, but this was a lazy vacation for us.
2. Sights…Nat and I like to keep moving when we’re camping, we’re always looking for some new adventure or sight to see. From rainforests to tide pools to waterfalls to glaciers, Olympic has some amazing places.  We caught a few ranger programs and treated ourselves to a hot springs soak and kayak exploration. The coolest were all the critters…we saw whales, bald eagles, a wacky sea slug, and scads of birds, fish and big trees that all kept me busy honing my identification skills.
3. Solitude…no crowds, no boundaries, lots of open trail and road made for a nice escape and a rediscovery of how much we still enjoy each other’s company after years of hanging out together every day!

We spent the last couple of nights on aREAL bed in a sweet little b&b in this very bizarre Norwegian village in the Sound called Poulsbo. Lots of Swedes and Nordic types, and lots of baked goods. It was a slow and smooth re-entry into civilization, capped off with a visit to Seattle and the salmon ladders. We saw the living fish on the ladders and the dead ones tossed around in Pike Place Market. Good salmon.

And that was my week…

Wow - it has been a little while since I posted. Suffice it to say, it has been a bit busy as of late. I’ve been teaching scads  of youngsters the wonders of marine science - waving my arms around like an octopus and schooling like an anchovy as we wade through barnacled rocks and drag plankton nets around. It has been fun stuff…and interspersed with some boating classes here and there. Gotta love a teaching job that incorporates games of "gladiator" on a kayak AND dissecting squid. Oh, and I can’t forget the fish printing…painting dead fish and making snazzy t-shirts seems to be a highlight for most 11 year olds.

This will be the last week of THAT, and though I will miss the chaos and the giggles, I am excited to have some time to get down to the nitty gritty administrative stuff that has been only getting minimal attention for the past couple months. I’m always ready for a change, and I kind of get a kick out of organizing data bases and calling around for fundraisers. Nevermind the budgets and grants. Ooooooh, budgets and grants.

Now that the summer is winding down, I’ve realized that Nat and I have been in Berkeley for just about a year already…boy does time fly by when you’re old, huh? We went driving up to Point Reyes today, something we did when we had our original rental car 12 months ago. The dry golden hills and the smell of sage brush brought back a bit of the excitement and apprehension of that other journey. I enjoy feeling settled and secure (and scheduled), but I’m glad we keep exploring…

I’m looking into finding a new way of blogging - and some more thematic material, just to warn you…we’ll see. I’m a little tired of all the ads and leggy women that keep appearing here, you dig?

As some of you know, I’ve been on an anti-plastic campaign during the past couple of years. It all began when I started to research recycled plastic lumber (plumber) for use in the education garden at Drumlin Farm. It continued with an article in the Boston Globe about huge concentrations of PCBs in the breast milk of Inuit mothers up in the arctic. Currently I am scared out of my mind by how much plastic is in the ocean and washing up on the beach around my office (some estimate that beaches are now 20% plastic! so much for rocks and sand…), and how many dangerous chemical compounds are bouncing around in our bottled/plastic-lined canned/packaged/processed/bagged food supply. Plastic recycling is helping to break down and release more of these compounds into the environment every second, (thanks, entropy) so it isn’t solving much of the problem.

Plastic is pretty scary stuff, when you start to understand what it is made of and how prevalent it is. And every bit that has ever been made is still here, slowly breaking into brittle bits to be eaten by critters, turning into beaches, leaching up the food chain, trickling into the water supply. No wonder my environmental chemistry class in college was all about poly-carbon reactions.We’re not throwing it all into landfills or dumping barge upon barge of plastic at sea, but all of that is still out there, and it is making a big impact.

Our Stolen Future has some good research and updates on the issues of cancer, breast feeding, and other research being done. Agalita is an organization I’m working with to educate kids about the "garbage patch" in the Pacific and has some great info. on marine impacts of plastics. And the Ecology Center has out out a simple info sheet on health effects of plastics.

The biggest, and easiest action you can take is to get plastic water bottles out of your life. Hell, the wate in them isn’t any cleaner than your tap anyway (most times it is actually worse.) Even Nalgenes are on their way out, an aluminum bottle is the way to go. Then work on the other stuff…and if you have to use it, at least re-use it or recycle it. I’m learning to get adept at hunting down glass and aluminum food storage containers and bringing my own bags everywhere. And when I have kids, no plastic toys to chew on. I still haven’t figured out how to eliminate the plastic bulk food bags…any ideas?

Yes, it is still Sunday, but it is MY Saturday, since I work the normal ones. Since a lovely breakfast at the chocolate factory and the seeing-off of Nat’s folks after a week of visiting,  I have spent this amazing, perfect-weather day camped out on the futon in front of the t.v….besides some watering of the lawn and some minor cookage. Besides the world cup, the conclusion of which made me very happy, I have been trapped by a succession of "real pirate" escapades on the discovery channel, travel narratives, cooking shows, a bit of hugh hefner’s girlfriends, some log cabin building by cbs and that zany, annoying-as-hell-ty-pennigton…and, finally, a pea battle by the iron chefs. What is my Saturday coming to? Who am I? I hate t.v….because I am an addict. I am addicted to catchy announcer voices, pretty faces, and tedious, complicated plots. When I don’t have a t.v. at my mind-numbing disposal, I have to keep busy in other ways. My t.v.-less Saturdays are filled with productive time-filling activities - balanced checkbooks, completed knitting projects, healthy upper arms, weeded gardens. With a t.v. I try to finish all those projects in time for the new Gilmore Girls, the first Texan Ranch House Episode, and my guilty Simple Life obsessions. Heck, maybe it makes me more efficient in the long run, but I sure feel like a guilty, non-progressive American tonight. Hand me a bud and some cheetos, baby. And check what’s next on the netflix…

My cats won’t come home, so I’m blogging. We made the mistake of turning our inside cats into outside dog-cats, and though it was a slow process, (involving harnesses, leashes, walks in the arboretum, hikes in the oakland hills, trial jumps from the top of the compost over the fence into the neighbor’s yard) the transformation is nearly complete…the cats want to be out in the dark instead of heeding my sweet pleas to come back and get the fu%& inside.

I want the cats in because I am tired and want to curl up with my book without worrying. This week I’ve been teaching canoeing, leading to some minor shoulder aches and a lot of laughs. It is yet another one of those rediscoveries of youth, having grown up with a canoe and a big pond around the corner. I haven’t really paddled much since Nat and I did a canoe camping trip for a week on Moosehead Lake in Maine a couple of summers back, and I forgot how relaxing it is…as long as the waves are slight and there aren’t any tankers or sailboats about to sideswipe you. Definitely a cool skill to teach. J strokes and T rescues come in handy for Jeopardy, too.

I also got to do a tour of my office building today. It is a straw-bale building, using photovoltaic to generate electricity and solar panels for water and radiant heat. We’ve also got sunflower-seed boards for desks, natural linoleum, recycled glass benches, and wheat-board walls. Pretty green stuff, and practical for residential use. But it is interesting to try to teach kids about green building when they don’t even have any real concept of energy use. Launching into an explaination of photovoltaics, I asked the kids where they thought the electricity for their homes came from. "The sun, AND the moon, " says one kid. "Wires," says another. Hmmm. "What about your car? What makes it run?" That was a bit easier. From there we could move on to water, coal, fusion, all the major sources here in California. But I still don’t think they get it. Maybe if we hooked up the gameboy to the fuel cell, that might ring a bell…

Well, the solstice and the sunshine make it official…summer is here. My tomatoes seem to grow a foot a day and the bean plants have made it through the snail onslaught and into the light. I am sufficiently sun-colored (not quite burned, not quite tanned) to live up visually to my job title of official City of Berkeley Naturalist.  And I finally want to eat salads every day instead of shunning the very notion. Summer as defined by Erin. Quite fresh.

I just finished up a week of training staff for the Adventure Playground down at the Marina. It is a pretty amazing place, and one of the last of its kind in the U.S. Basically, it is a place where kids get to do whatever they want. They also have lots of tools, paint, wood, nails, and random donated STUFF at their disposal - stuff like old boats, old cabinets, sail cloth, plasic tubing, carpet, windows…The kids (and staff) construct their own spaces and places out of all this stuff. They also get to ride a long zip line, climb a tire wall, play in a big net, and, again, do pretty much whatever they want, as long as it is not harmful to themselves or others.

I don’t know about you, but I was blessed with a childood that included a father and a sizeable work bench in the garage. I was given free reign over the hammers, saws, boards, and nails. I think Dad stocked scrap wood especially for myself and my siblings to play with. We build rif-raf funiture for our hideout in the forsythia hedge, as well as treehouses, skateboard ramps, and makeshift rabbit hutches. I painted and re-painted my iron bed frame, side tables, and dressers. I usually measured once and cut badly, but I learned how to hold a hammer and pull lightly on a saw blade.

This is not the experience of most children, whose furniture comes pre-assembled and pre-painted, who have no garages with work benches. Just as there is much talk of a nature-deficit, there is also a practical-skill-deficit surfacing among modern youth. Kids don’t know how to masure, much less cut. They do not have yards and spaces of their own. If they do have backyards, they are filled with pre-assembled plastic Little Tike play toys, not hand-made tire swings and treehouses. Kids aren’t often given permission to build, create, and make believe much anymore, except on their computers. The Adventure Playground is an amazing place, made moreso by the fact that it is supported and allowed in an era of insane liability issues and "not in my backyard"  attitudes to such conceptual playgrounds (lots of slapstick wood forts seem to bring down property values.) Maybe we can all get one going in OUR diminishing backyards.

Well, I’ve returned from my Southern sojourn. It was nice. And hot. And full of meat-eating.  I’m so into this local food thing lately, it just seemed more authentic and practical to eat some of the regional cuisine in the mom-and-pop bbq and sit-down places than go hunt down the one crappy meat-free menu item at some national chain….and unfortunately those seemed to be the options for dining out in the middle of Tennessee.   And I do love my pulled pork…especially pulled off of some small farmer’s pigs. (some of you are reading this in horror, others in amusement, still others in exhasperation. I know, I know) We did cook some, too. It was nice to cook for Jess, who barely has time to feed herself in between nursings and naps. The Vidalia onions and Georgia peaches were rolling in. Yum.

Enough about food. I could go on and on. It was crazy to be back down there. I moved out four years ago and had only been back for a brief visit right after moving, what with all the work demands and Nat’s conference faux-vacations taking up any free time these past few years. Still, somewhat surprisingly, the hot, heavy air full of fireflies and lightening storms was really comforting and familiar. I found myself pining a lot - pining for old friends and old flavors, for dusty book stores and long chats on creaky porches. I don’t think I’ve yet worn out my romanticism for that part of the country. I even like the grittiness…the juke joints, the gravel roads, oil cloth roofs, falling apart trucks…I had hoped to figure out a way to visit Oxford again, but it didn’t work out. I hope to take a longer trip back there soon. It is such an amazing town, full of contradictions and gems…traits embodied in most of the people I know down there. Maybe I’ll go down for the Sunflower Blues Festival  in Clarksdale. It is a great time…and you usually get to run into Morgan Freeman at his restaurant/music hall.

It is a beautiful day…clear and breezy and bright. I spent the morning biking around the neighborhood collecting local flavors and favors to bring to friends down South. I’m headed to Tennessee tomorrow to visit two of my most favorite soul mates. How convenient that they decided to end up 40 miles apart. And that they both have babies for me to play with. Though the "auntie" role makes it harder to pack lightly -  I keep finding so many fun presents.

This one is full of plugs. And links. Liberal, crunchy links. Get ready.

May is the "Eat Local Month", at least according to the Locavores , a group Nat and I joined about a month ago. Though we’ve pledged to do our best to try and eat within our watershed for the month (arbitarily designated to be 100 miles in diameter), we’ve fallen victim to some coffee cravings and bbq/brunch invitations that have kept us from strict adherence to the plan. We’re catching a bit of flack, too. It is interesting, though, just trying to get a handle on where our food is coming from. Simple things, especially, like pepper and salt…you’re pretty clever if you can even figure out what pepper is (hint - not a pepper). Did you know that the majority of commercial table salt is actually evaporated from SF Bay? So we’re good there. And I’ve been defining local as in local small-scale businesses, too, like say, my UnCommon Grounds coffee roasters down the street, and Scharffenburger chocolates. Berkeley is a pretty easy place to fulfill this challenge, actually, and I’m sure there are many people here doing it much more to the letter than we are willing to…we may live in Berkeley, but we are far from Berzerkeley. It would be much more difficult if we were trying to eat within 100 miles of Roslindale, Massachusetts right now. I would have had to do a lot of canning and preserving over the winter (right…). But here we’re polishing off our winter garden edibles and putting in the tomatoes, munching strawberries, asparagas, and tatangelos to our heart’s content, and finding yummy yogurt from cows milked 20 miles away. Nevermind the occasional Jelly Belly. Yes, they’re local.  And the taqueria dinner. Probably not very local, though we walked there.

Another nouveau-hippie plug for you -  tomorrow is Bike to Work Day in San Francisco. Before the weather turns, hop on your bike and ride…in support of more bikable cities or less oil dependence, whatever floats your boat. Or you can do it in solidarity with your , eh-hem, friend who has to do it every day, rain or shine, bent spokes, near-fatalities and heavy-bags be damned… and be glad you don’t have to suffer the anguish. Actually, we were bequeathed a car last week for a few days and we had a hard time figuring out what we could do with it. I decided to take the opportunity to bring some files and books to my new job. It actually took me longer to drive to the Marina, park,a nd walk to the nature center than it does to bike, surprisingly. And I missed the landmarks of my usual journey - all the roses in bloom, the dog walkers by Aquatic park, the cars gridlocked along the freeway as I cruised over them on the bike bridge. With the dry weather, a more convenient job, the subtle mastery of pub trans, and the extreme generosity of our car-owning friends, I think we may be able to hold off on vehicle ownership indefinitely. Making every day a bike-to-work-day.

Okay, last plug. For Spring. In our yard. Yay, Spring! Here’s what it looks like lately: