Category Archives: Sustainability

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Reinventing Environmental Education

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This morning we had a group of 1st graders participate in the Soil Secrets program.  They gathered “ingredients” for soil and cooked up a great batch…except that it will take 100 years for their ingredients to decompose and become one inch of soil.  At least that’s what they were told.  I told Howard the naturalist that I’ve been taking his teachings on Change and the 3 As (Awareness, Appreciation and Action) and blogging about them.  I told him I added “Attitude” to the list.  Just then, another staff member chimed in and said, “Oh, those are the 4 pillars of Environmental Education: Awareness, Appreciation, Attitude and Action”.  So intuitively, I’ve been piecing together a way of learning that’s already been codified and stamped with a Presidential approval…by Richard Nixon, no less.   I looked it up on Wikipedia.

Environmental education (EE) refers to organized efforts to teach about how natural environments function and, particularly, how human beings can manage their behavior and ecosystems in order to live sustainably. The term is often used to imply education within the school system, from primary to post-secondary. However, it is sometimes used more broadly to include all efforts to educate the public and other audiences, including print materials, websites, media campaigns, etc. Related disciplines include outdoor education and experiental education.  EE focuses on:

  • Awareness and sensitivity about the environment and environmental challenges
  • Knowledge and understanding about the environment and environmental challenges
  • Attitude concern for the environment and help to maintain environmental quality
  • Skills to mitigate the environmental problems
  • Participation for exercising existing knowledge and environmental related programs.

There’s a history section that notes that thinking about the environment was at first a more philosophical endeavor, engaging writers and ‘naturalists’ like Rousseau and Agassiz and became a more “scientific” issue after the Depression and dust bowl days when Conservation Education became “a major scientific management and planning tool that helped solve social, economic, and environmental problems.”

On Thursday, I learned that the CCC had built the dam at the Wehr Nature Center in 1935.  I also learned that they planted pine forests on top of the glacial kames because reforestation was generally considered good management.  Howard told me that it introduced a monoculture that wasn’t really typical of the native vegetation of the area.

So I’m beginning to realize that I’m stepping into the middle of a long-term drama.  The dialogue isn’t new, I’m just new.  But I notice that the dialogue has become more clinical and less poetic.  I like the aspect of grace.  I like the aspect of wonder.  I met a student on our program today who is getting her certification in early childhood education, K-3.  Environmental education represents 8 hours of her total degree requirements.  She will check it off her list and be that much closer to becoming a teacher. What will she impart to her students?  She laments the fact that most city kids don’t get the opportunity to go on a field trip to a park.  They simply can’t afford it.  Sometimes one parent will foot the bill for the entire class to go, and that helps.  When they can’t leave the school, they try to do a nature unit in the classroom.  One class did a seed experiment that failed because their class was in a basement room that didn’t get enough sunlight to grow the seeds in their little plastic bags.  They all rotted instead of sprouting.  What happens when you put in your required curriculum hours on environmental education but the students don’t actually get to experience a natural environment?  I suppose they learn that environments can be very different.  Wendell Berry hates the term, actually.  He says, “I don’t live in an environment.  I live in a place.”

Man, I wish I could take every kid in Milwaukee out one at a time and show them the Wehr Nature Center or Havenwoods at least once every year of their school career.

Green space at the heart of the city at Havenwoods State Forest, Milwaukee

That would be a good beginning.  How do you develop love for the world in yourself?  How do you help develop it in another person?

 

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Change

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Today I tagged along with a group of 4-6th graders as they participated in a program called “Let’s Go Climb a Moraine”.  The staff naturalist gathered them all at the beginning of the hike and said that he hoped they would remember one important word from the day’s experience.  “Glacier?” they guessed.  No.  CHANGE.  Everything on the planet is changing.  Even the land.  For example, Wisconsin was once underwater at about the equator, back in the days of Pangaea.  The glaciers shaped landforms.  A beaver changes the landscape by chewing down trees and creating dams.  People are making all kinds of changes to the earth as well.  Naturalist Howard also asked the kids, “Why do we bother to study and learn about the earth?  The more we know about the earth, the better we’re able to do what?”  Protect it.  Take care of it.

And change?  Why do we bother to look at change and be aware of it?

So we won’t be so afraid of it, perhaps.

Change is inevitable.  Eventually, everything changes.  Some changes take a long, long time and are not even noticed in a few lifetimes.  Other changes happen in an instant.  Does change make you feel unsettled, anxious, frightened, panicked?  Are you comfortable with change?  Do you delight in change?  “Depends on what the change is.”  Sure.  That’s a fair question, but would you be able to accept every change eventually?  Are there some changes that you would never accept?  What do we teach about change?

New colors on the trees

My children are going to be living quite differently from the way I did.  There is change in the air.  Our economic situation seems like a popcorn kernel about to burst.  Something’s gotta give.  And I think that will be a very good thing.  I think that the older I get, the more open I am to change.  You might say the opposite would be more typical, and perhaps it is, but the longer I live, the more changes I see and the more I get used to change.

Steve really enjoyed our hike and remarked, “My life’s been good to me.”  It made me think of John Denver’s song, “Poems, Prayers and Promises”.

The days they pass so quickly now
Nights are seldom long
And time around me whispers when it's cold
The changes somehow frighten me
Still I have to smile
It turns me on to think of growing old
For though my life's been good to me
There's still so much to do
So many things my mind has never known
I'd like to raise a family
I'd like to sail away
And dance across the mountains on the moon

I have to say it now
It’s been a good life all in all
It’s really fine
To have the chance to hang around
And lie there by the fire
And watch the evening tire
While all my friends and my old lady
Sit and watch the sun go down

And talk of poems and prayers and promises
And things that we believe in
How sweet it is to love someone
How right it is to care
How long it’s been since yesterday
What about tomorrow
What about our dreams
And all the memories we share

I’ll always have a place in my heart for Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr.

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Righteous Depression

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Ya know, in general, I think I’m a pretty happy, positive person.  I want to be like that.  Also peaceful, calm and occasionally insanely silly.  I did have a wicked period of postpartum depression after my first child was born and a bout with post-traumatic stress syndrome when Jim had heart surgery at 31. Okay, but I’m a pretty happy person, I think.  I’ve noticed now that since I’m a widow, if I get started crying about something, I can go on leaking for hours.  Now, could this be due to my new agenda of trying to face the reality of the world honestly?  The truth is the truth hurts.  Suffering exists in the world.  Various coping strategies and religions exist primarily to soften the blow of that blunt piece of honesty.  I am trying to be open, and it leaves me vulnerable.  Ouch.  It felt better to be Polyanna.

What to do about the responsibility and challenge to look deeply into the suffering of the planet, to become aware of the failures of systems and cultures, of relationships and communication from the large-scale to the intimate?  I feel sad about the truth.  Can I call this righteous depression?  Is this deep or simply pathological?

I am suddenly reminded of one of my life stories.  My sister and I were in a car accident when I was 17 and she was 20.  She was driving, and flipped the car at 80 miles per hour on the Interstate.  We were transported in an ambulance together to the Lincoln, NE hospital.  I was aware that they had been doing CPR on her the whole time with no response.  I had seen her covered in blood slumped next to me in the car before I was extricated from it.  I was in shock, but I was able to comprehend what was going on.  The hospital has policies about who can release information to patients, though, and everything must be done according to protocol.  So I found myself in an examining room with a nurse.  I had been checked out and aside from a bump on the head and some cuts, I am fine.  I know that my sister is not fine.   A nurse comes in and sits in the chair in the corner and says something about how they’re also examining my sister.  “It’s very bad,” she says, looking worried and vague, but directly at me.  “It’s just very bad.”  I felt like she was trying to talk to me in code or something.  She wanted to say something specific, but she couldn’t.  Instead, she just kept repeating how bad it was.  Was this supposed to prepare me for something?  Or was it supposed to fill me with a sense of doom and dread?  I realize she was probably a very sympathetic woman who felt terrible at being in the position of not having more comforting things to say or even more authority to speak the truth.  The result was just….awkward.  What do I do with this?  I suppose I could put her out of her misery and say, “It’s okay.  I’ve guessed that she’s dead.  I will deal with it.  I have a plan.”  Honestly, this is what I want to do in these situations.  I want to take responsibility and make everyone around me feel better.  Then I suppose I can feel righteously depressed.  It’s bad; it’s very bad, but I am going to try to do the right thing.

There are some very seriously bad things happening around us.  Global climate change, deforestation, greenhouse gases, ozone depletion, drought, famine, economic devastation, war, oppression and domination, political atrocities, nuclear poisoning, chemical poisoning, racial hatred, bullying, on and on and on.  How much of this can I be open to?  What if I bit off just a tiny portion and tried to chew on that only, to save myself from being overwhelmed?  What if I tried to absorb the totality and sank into a dark depression?  What do we do with deep sadness?  Share it?  Ignore it?  Fight it?  Meditate?  I’m open to suggestions.

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You’re Grounded!

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I have this thing about wanting to do things “right”.  I grew up with a strict father who had a clear sense of what he thought was right, and I was always trying to please him.  I find myself feeling anxious about whether or not I’ve made the right decisions or acted in the best possible way or been “good” in every way I can.  The more interactions I have, the more I have to feel anxious about.  So, in a busy week, I feel more stress.  Yesterday, I spent 7 hours making pea soup.  It turned out fine, although I had to do some re-direction and repair in the middle (turns out that whole dried peas don’t cook the same way as split peas).  Not a big deal, but I felt like I had “failed” to be super-efficient and triumphant in that endeavor.  My relationship with my cooking contained some anxiety and thus drained energy from me rather than invigorating me.  We have a relationship to everything on the planet, and this is living.  Living can be a drain, or it can be energizing, or anywhere in between.  It depends on whether you’re blocking energy or “surfing” on it.  In other words, you can be at war with life, or you can be at peace with it.  Our relationship with food is a good example of this.  Did you know that the use of pesticides and herbicides came out of the technology of WWI?  The chemicals that were developed for warfare were applied to food production.  Agribusiness declared war on the earth in order to use its technology and generate a wartime economy.  Conflict, manipulation, “strong-arming” the earth in order to wrestle food from it is a particular kind of relationship.  Organic farming uses a more peaceful relationship to obtain food, working with nature and not against it.

I have been trained, in a way, to think that doing things in a prescribed “right” way is the least stressful.  I have been a pretty compliant person.  But this anxiety of compliance also produces stress.  Is there another way?  Yes.  Being grounded and open.  I’m never going to know the “right” way to do everything because there isn’t a right way.  There are a million ways.  And that’s okay.  Steve and my sister share a birthday.  They both have a way of reminding me that the way I am is wonderful, but it’s not the only way.  They both play “devil’s advocate” and bring up something that I hadn’t thought about without saying I’m wrong.  It took me some time to take this as a gift and not as a chastisement.  I was used to taking everything short of complete praise as chastisement.  I used to be somewhat afraid of both of these important people whom I love so much.  They are challenging (and they are smarter than I am).  I have a relationship with them that can be conflictual or peaceful depending on my posture of defensiveness or openness.

So, I’m still thinking about all my relationships to the residents of earth, from the dominant one I have with Steve (three year anniversary today of our very first date) to the invisible ones I have with the bacteria in my own body.   My sister points out that “What are you feeling?” is perhaps a better question than “How are you feeling?”  What am I feeling in these relationships?  Am I feeling energized?  Drained?  Peaceful?  Afraid? Stiff? Open? Anxious?  Sad? Mad? Glad?  Being open to what I’m feeling allows discussion and movement and flow and change.

Letting go of the anxiety of having “right” relationships and exploring what I feel is what I mean by being grounded and open.  What surfaces in our relationships to other species when we do this?  Here’s one thing that came to mind: the euthanizing of animals who have attacked humans.  I have read several news articles lately about grizzly bear attacks, wild cat attacks and even a deer attack (a buck with antlers that inflicted some serious wounds) that ended with the report that these animals “had to be euthanized”.  I always thought that euthanasia was “mercy killing”, like putting a wounded animal out of its misery.  These stories don’t indicate that the animals were in misery, they were simply protecting territory or defending themselves from a perceived threat.  It seems that they were killed as a punishment for attacking a human.  Some of the articles mention that the possibility of rabies warrants “mercy”, but the animal is killed before any diagnosis of rabies is made.   What is the feeling?  Do these animals need to be punished because they’ve injured a human?  Is this about anger and a preference for humans?  Are we at war with animals?  If we end up in the same place at the same time, is it kill or be killed because you are my enemy?   Why shouldn’t an animal take out a human who has shot at it or who represents a food source in a depleted environment?  Are we somehow exempt from being in that kind of relationship?  Why?  For that matter, are we supposed to be exempt from being on the “losing” side of a relationship with listeria bacteria?  Are we “better” or “more valuable”?  Why? (or why not?)

How much can we be open to in our relationships with the world?

What do you feel about buzzards?

What about lotus flowers?

Unknown's avatar

Juxtaposed on a Planet

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Last night I wondered why I’m not an insect.  There are only 4,000 species of mammals on the earth and over 100,000 species of insects.  There are even more microbes.  I was thinking how simply one of those animals lives in the soil, a short life with clear intent.  My life as a human seems so much more complicated.  Even so, by human standards, my life is pretty simple now.  I don’t have a job, and I’m done raising kids.  Today, I walked to a restaurant to have breakfast with Steve and his mom, then walked to the grocery store to buy vegetables.  I am making soup and working on the computer.  I made a phone call to my mother and left a voice message.  Pretty uneventful, you might say, but still involving a lot of decisions.  How did I impact the planet today?  Why did I buy that item?  Why did I use electricity?  Why did I throw that in the garbage?  Where did I spend my time and energy and why?  How did I get here, where I am today?

Yesterday I felt pretty exhausted by my busy week.  Socially, I had spent time with all my family and Steve’s plus met strangers on our camping trip.  Geographically, I had covered over 500 miles.  Physically, I had hiked some but sat in a car more.  Psychically, I had given a lot of energy to my most important relationships.  When I’m with my kids, I feel nameless parts of myself going out to them.  I look at them, all 4 together with full-grown energy, and I feel spent in some way.  I wonder about insects who live to reproduce and then die in a matter of hours.  That seems pretty simple.  What do I do with the years I may still be living?

The web of interconnections on the planet is unfathomable.  I feel like I dabble my foot in here and there, watching ripples emanate and then wonder what I did.  What was the meaning, what will be the result, was that responsible?  I have awareness but not full understanding.  I have appreciation and take action based on my best intentions, and may never even know the impact.  I am not in control.  I wonder if simplifying my life is really an effort to have more control.  I suppose I act in faith, as does everyone, in the end.

Sometimes the things that I see connected here on earth don’t make much sense.  How did we get giraffes in Madison WI?

Barn, windmill, maple tree, giraffe. One of these things is not like the others.

My human brain wants to separate things and put them into tidy, little boxes organized by my own way of thinking.  I want a rational world, everything doing its job in its place.  Then, all I have to do is figure out what my job is and what my place is and do it.  No more problems, no more conundrums, no more philosophical issues.  Neat.  Ah, but as Alan Watts says, the world is “wiggly”.  Lines are blurred.  Connections are made, broken, re-made, detoured, disappear, and appear willy-nilly.  Is there something I must do?  My energy is spent just thinking about it sometimes.  I suppose there is another way, a Middle Way, a way that has to do with finding the flow of energy and going with it.  I found a website today that talks about our ecological thoughtprint.  Before we place a footprint on the planet, or maybe as we place our footprints on the planet, we have a thoughtprint.  Learning about how we think about our connections and using that knowledge to help us to make better connections is a valuable lesson.  Education doesn’t begin with an A, but I think it belongs in the ‘awareness, appreciation, action, attitude, activism’ list.

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Activism

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I am building a vocabulary of A-words: awareness, appreciation, action, attitude and activism.  I just got back from Madison where my family walked in a fundraiser for the American Diabetes Association.  Yesterday, we saw the film “Think Global Act Rural” (“Solutions Locales Pour un Desordres Global”) in a showing by the Milwaukee Film Festival.  Go to the website at http://www.thinkglobalactrural.com to see more about it.  I recommend it for its intense presentation of the failure of the Green Revolution and its depiction of organic farming solutions.  I can’t recommend its artistry, though.  The jumpy, out-of-focus camera handling is distracting to me, and the sequence of segments is a bit disjointed as well.  But the information is astonishing.  Of course, these two events are interconnected.  As a species, we have been poisoning ourselves and starving ourselves and getting further and further from being able to maintain a healthy relationship with food and food production.  Statistics can be eye-opening and misleading at the same time.  Rather than throw some shocking numbers up, I’d like to challenge you to look deeply into a few questions:

1) Do you think that spending time and effort in obtaining food is something basic to life?  Is that a right, a responsibility, a duty, or a privilege?  How would you describe it?  Is it something too “base” for beings as intelligent as we are?  Or is it ennobling to use our intelligence to do it well and graciously?  What do you think of farmers and their work?

2) How would you feel if you discovered that multinational corporations were purposely studying global food production to figure out ways to create monopolies on all aspects of it?  How would you feel if you realized that because of that control, a change or break-down in their system would mean that access to food would be cut off entirely for the populations that had become dependent on them?  And that, very likely, would include you.

3) How much do you know about the food web, how plants make food, how soil and sun deliver the necessary building blocks for plant life, etc?  If you had only yourself and nature to depend on, how would you eat?

4) How much does the quality of a person’s health depend on their diet, do you think?  Do you think that the medical industry creates a dependency on costly health care and de-emphasizes the importance of a naturally healthy lifestyle?  Do you think about “the bottom line” and who may be making money on your lifestyle choices?

5) Are you satisfied with the way that you live?  Do you think your neighbors are?  Your nation?  How about the people in other countries?  How about the planet?  Are you satisfied with the way that life on this planet is going?  (Yeah, this is broad, but whatever you’re thinking, try to follow it out to that end.  And do be serious.  It’s far too easy to be clever.)

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Changing Attitudes

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Awareness, Appreciation, Action.  Somewhere in there, Attitude is also an issue.  I suppose our attitude springs from our appreciation or understanding of a situation.  Camping in a state or national campsite is an opportunity to observe different attitudes in action.  We like to camp in the middle of the week, after Labor Day, in remote areas without a lot of “recreational” amenities so that we can find quiet and wildlife.  Here’s where we were Tuesday night:

The entire campground was empty except for the host and two other rather large camping trailers occupying the handicapped spaces.  One of the sites had twinkly lights up and a dog, but they were very quiet.  We heard coyotes howling and cicadas thrumming quite loudly all night, which was just what we wanted to hear.  On Thursday, we were in the National Forest and had set up our tent at the end of the camping loop, quite alone.  When we came back from our day hike, the spot next to us was occupied.  Gear covered the picnic table.  It looked like a large group had left one car behind and gone off for the day.  We prepared our evening meal in quiet and enjoyed that.  They returned later, made a fire, and started preparing their dinner.  It was dark by this time, and Steve and I were setting out on our “night hike”.  We like taking a walk in the dark after dinner, no flashlight.  The campers next to us were equipped with head lamps, like miners.  They were also equipped with plenty of beer.  About 10 minutes before 10 o’clock, official quiet hours, they turned on their music.  We were just about to go to bed.  We decided to go over and talk to them.  We gently told one of them that we were disturbed by the noise they were making, that it was park policy to have quiet hours at 10pm, and that we would appreciate it if they would attempt to quiet down.  He thanked us for alerting them and went to speak to the group.  Back in our tent, the noise level seemed only minimally diminished.  The music was off, but the laughter erupted continually and carried down the canyon.  Steve eventually spoke to them again, his quiet, deep voice coming in underneath their raucous chatter.  They got a little quieter, and some of them soon turned in, after banging the latrine door and some garbage cans first.   At least one person stayed up all night long and kept the fire going.

We got up early and broke camp.  One woman from their party came over to apologize about the noise and said that she knew her voice and laughter could get out of hand.  We told her that we appreciated her coming over to apologize.  They were state college students who had been observing the snake migration, a tradition of sorts.  They were only staying one night.  Their reasons for being there were not the same as ours, but that wasn’t the conflict.  The conflict was in attitude.  What posture do you take in nature?  Is it a resource or playground for us to use as we wish?  Is it a sanctuary for us to tiptoe into reverently?  Those are only two examples, the possibilities are endless.  I was thinking of some articles I’d read recently on bullying.  I was thinking about Fred Rodgers and his two minutes of silence during an awards acceptance speech.   My mother sent me this news item today about a teacher who turned his front yard into a garden and promptly drew complaints from neighbors about the “nuisance”.

http://kitchengardeners.org/blogs/roger-doiron/stand-solidarity-adam-guerrero

Attitude.  We are not all on the same page about any issue.  How do you communicate your attitudes?  How do you respect others’?  How do you invite people to change their attitude and allow some new experience?  I wonder if the college campers heard the owls and coyotes that were active that night.  I want to be gentle and kind and peaceful in my approach to changing attitudes.  I don’t want to get aggressive or give in to power plays.  I do want to promote awareness and appreciation and action.

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I’m Baaaack!

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We returned from our 3 day camping trip this evening and will be heading out to Madison tomorrow to walk in the Step Out Walk to Stop Diabetes.  We ended up going down to Shawnee National Forest….again.  This was our fourth trip down there together.  The chance to spend a few more days in summer temperatures was just too appealing to pass up.  I loved watching the fall colors intensify as we drove north again today.  There were rain clouds in the area still and rainbows to accentuate the play of late afternoon sun.  I am glad to be back up in Wisconsin where the reds of sumac and maple have taken their place in the fall palette.   Down south on the Mississippi we got a chance to see migrating birds.  The snake migration was also going on, we heard, but we weren’t looking for them.  What we did see were flocks of white pelicans doing aerial maneuvers that took my breath away.  Going in one direction, they are brilliant white in the sun.  Then they turn, and you see the black undersides of their wings.  It’s magical!

American White Pelicans migrating south

...and stopping to rest by the Big Muddy

Can you imagine what it might have been like to be Meriwether Lewis or William Clark and see wildlife in the kinds of number that populated the United States in 1804?  I get excited seeing a few dozen turkey vultures sunning themselves in the early morning.  I wonder how many they saw on a daily basis during their expedition?

Turkey vultures warming up

What would be the difference in our cultural ideas about nature and conservation if experiences of wildlife sighting weren’t “exotic” but commonplace?  Would we feel more or less concerned about the web of biodiversity?

 

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Spontaneity

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Okay, so we didn’t set off on our camping trip today.  Steve’s feeling a bit…odd.  Low energy.  So, instead, we’re going to see a foodie film that’s part of the Milwaukee Film Festival (“El Bulli – Cooking in Progress”), and we’ll set out tomorrow.  We also picked out a new novel to read aloud.  This is a tradition that we started the first year we were dating.  We began with Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, and now we’ve begun The Plumed Serpent by D.H. Lawrence.  Also, check out my new blog bling, Brighter Planet’s 350 Challenge Patch.  It’s at the end of my posts.  One week from yesterday is the Diabetes Step Out Walk.  There’s a link to that down there, too.

My personal gold star for the day was letting Steve sleep in until 11am without getting anxious about a change in our plans.  I am becoming a more spontaneous person.  My kids will applaud.

Unknown's avatar

Slowing Down

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The morning after a splendid dinner party looks like this:

A kitchen full of dirty dishes

Four people, five beverages, three courses = dishes to wash.  Oh, but it went quickly and painlessly.  Then I took naps.  Three so far.  We’re both feeling a bit out of it today, not sure why.  Not hungover or anything, just slow and wobbly.  Plus, it’s been raining steadily.  Seasonal changes and changes in habit seem more noticeable as I grow older.  That’s good, though.  I want to be more aware; I want to slow down and notice life.

Tomorrow, we plan to head north into the upper peninsula of Michigan and camp in the Porcupine Mountains.  I’ve never been there.  I want to take lots of pictures and write blog entries in a journal to post when I return.  I want to keep my eyes open and learn.  I also want to figure out how to recycle the empty propane canisters for the Coleman stove.  We’ve collected 5 now, and the best information I can gather from the Coleman website is that perhaps a steel recycling place will take them, perhaps not.  I remember finding one in a fire pit once and digging out fibrous pieces that looked like asbestos or something.  With any luck, we’ll find enough dry wood that we won’t need to use another one.

Today’s reading material was from the book of Job and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.  Radical affirmations of the mystery, sanctity and loveliness of life.  “Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?  Declare, if you know all this.”  I cannot comprehend, but I can love.