Global Warming And Friends

Global warming is yet one more in a long line of issues that seems to divide people into believers and naysayers. As a person who firmly believes you don't get something for nothing, burning fossil fuels is an obvious no no. How can you burn up energy in 100 years that it took untold millions of years to creating without violating the something for nothing rule? At the very least, we run out of oil and need to find other ways to live in harmony with the planet. Some people argue that American lifestyles require high carbon fuel usage - but at the end of the day that's what's killing us. We're all fat because we're living off the energy of dinosaurs from a million years ago instead of the calories we consumed today.

I don't know what the answer is other than to go forward to the past - to a world were human energy is important, people lived in self-sustaining communities and our homes aren't filled with toxic crap from China. At the end of the day, buying stuff isn't bringing me happiness, hugs are.

In the spirit of local activism and global warming, I want to take a few minutes to share some of my local heroes. Carolyn Chase and Chris Klein - the amazing duo - who live a few blocks from me and who started the huge Earth Fair that happens every year in Balboa Park. I've volunteered with Earth Fair, am saving a creek thanks to a non-profit these two amazing people started, San Diego Earth Works, and have hope that sane decentralized transportation will become a reality in San Diego thanks to Move San Diego - another group with ties to the amazing duo. If it's environmentally progressive in San Diego, this is Chris and Carolyn are your connection.

The dynamic duo is in Copenhagen at the United Nations Conference on Climate change and have put together a website to allow those of us stuck in our mundane lives to hear some of the debates between regular people like ourselves.

Thank you Chris and Carolyn for all you do. You rock.

***From an email from Chris****************

Carolyn Chase and I are in Copenhagen at the UN conference on climate change (COP15). Officially, we are registered delegates of the Sierra Club, of which we are both life members.

We puzzled over how best to make a difference at the conference. We decided to create a special website, Message to America, and post videos of other delegates speaking their "message to America." We have also posted photos, and and there is a blog of updates, quotes, special notes, etc.

The goal is to give you a better picture of the kind of world citizens who are attending the event, and how critical this issue is for much of the world. It's one thing to deal with figures and technical abstractions. It's another to listen to a woman who's island is in danger of slipping beneath the waves.

**************End email from Chris*******************

Full Disclosure

In the interest of full disclosure, I went to Black's on Friday with an out of town friend (who used to be a local) and the lifeguard tower was gone. My first thought was that I was loosing my mind, but in the interest of proving myself sane, we went and talked to the lifeguards - the ones in the palm thatched hut. Apparently Hollywood was filming a television pilot and had the lifeguard tower on the sand (with 24/7 guards) for a few days.

The rest of the story is true, just this slight update. And thankfully the beach is once again lifeguard tower free.

Friday night the water was incredibly warm, the dolphins came out and frolicked in the surf and even did a few back flips for us, and I caught a couple of waves.

Life is good.

An Unstable Bluff

In more cliched terms, what I have to talk about is a slippery slope, but in the case of this particular cliche, we're also talking about sandstone bluffs and what was once one of the last wild beaches in Southern California.

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, there was a beach in San Diego where nudity was 100% legal. Black's Beach is at the bottom of a bluff. On top of the bluff are bizillion dollar homes for the rich and not so famous. Just to the south is the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the biggest children's beach I know of (aka La Jolla Shores).

In 1977, voters approved an ordinance banning nudity on the city owned portion of the beach (the northern chunk of Black's falls under state jurisdiction). Life went on as before with people frolicking naked along the entire stretch of Black's Beach. Technically illegal, but in practice Black's was a nude beach. From volleyball to surfing, all the in nude, or in swimsuits if you preferred.

Black's was great. No hordes of touristsfrom Iowa and Nebraska only the nudist variety. Great surfing. Community. Full moons on the beach and a steady stream of dolphins feeding offshore.

A few years back, the City of San Diego decided to start enforcing the wearing of swimsuits on their portion of the beach. I don't know all the details of why, but it probably has something to do with the bizillionaires who live in the neighborhood - and what bizillionaires want, bizillionaires get. The state continues to allow nudity on it's portion of the beach.

At first, life rolled as it has at Black's. But then things started going downhill. First hordes of freshman UCSD students started appearing on the beach in swimsuits with IPods. Then tourists from the hotels in the area started wandering around. Not nudist tourists, but tourists who pay $500 a night for a motel room and drive Mercedes tourists - the death of any cool place.

Then last year, the families started showing up with lots of small children and strollers. I'm not talking hippie families whose idea of a mini-vacation is spending the night on the beach, but people with jobs and brand new cars. People who think that their kids are more important than anything else and who completely miss the idea of a wild beach where you manage on your own and with your friends.

Then on Monday the previously unthinkable happened - the City of San Diego installed a lifeguard tower to watch, I'm assuming, over those middle class families and their children. It's not like we haven't had lifeguards on Black's for ever - we have (or at least almost forever). But the lifeguards used to come in with a camper on the back of a pickup truck, or hung out under their palm thatched shade structure they built on the cliffs. Like everything else about Black's, it was homegrown, not part of some big industry.

I feel violated - like something amazingly precious has been destroyed so people don't have to be responsible for keeping their own kids from drowning. I know the clock never turns counter clockwise, but I wish we could go back to the old Black's full of fat naked men with tiny penises and surfers sleeping on the beach so they could be up for the first light and catch those early waves with the dolphins.

In mourning.

Earth Fair is Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the big Earth Fair in San Diego's Balboa Park. San Diego's Earth Fair bills itself as "The world's largest annual environmental fair and Earth Day Celebration – produced by volunteers." It's free and fun. Environmental booths, music, a kid's parade, and the unofficial mondo drum circle. This year, I'm working a booth for the Rose Creek Watershed Alliance, of which my local community group, the Friends of Rose Creek is a part. I'll be there all day long, so stop by and visit if you like. We'll be on the east end of El Prado in front of the SD Railroad Museum.

If you've never been and you're nearby come on down and celebrate Earth Month with us!

One Person at a Time

There’s been a growing movement of churches and other mainstream groups engaging in social justice and issues of environmental protection. From the UN Summit for Religious and Spiritual Leaders to the various incarnations of the Social Forums, people of faith have been creating grassroots movements that focus on what we, the people, see as critical issues of social justice, equality, health care and protecting the earth. That’s the beauty of a right wing president who doesn’t understand the web of life or society for that matter – it forces the people to rise up and create a better world.

When Senator Obama stepped onto the world stage, he was riding the wave of thousand of activists with the dream that a better world is possible. Instead of telling people to work for him, he plugged in to swells rippling throughout our society and caught the wave to shore. A few wobbles here and there, but basically a clean ride.

But the shout out goes to all the people organizing on the ground for a future befitting the vision of the American dream. You are my heroes. And a brief word of warning. Just because we elected a Black man as president doesn’t mean we can let up on what we are doing. As Senator Obama said in Grant Park on November 4 "… you didn't do this just to win an election and I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead." So let the celebrations ring out and then let’s get back to our social forums and activist community meetings, our habitat restoration and sharing food with the hungry.

For as someone wise once said, "if the people lead, the leaders will follow." And lead we did, one step at a time, one person at a time. The only way that change is possible.

Peace out!

Salt Water, Strong Arms and the Quest to Save the Planet

Today was the 17th Annual Paddle for Clean Water - an awesome event put together by San Diego Surfrider. The basic premise is we want clean ocean water and we're willing to paddle around the Ocean Beach Pier (about 3/4 of a mile) to make our voices heard. I'm not sure how long I've been participating, probably since the second or third paddle.

One day many years ago (back in the early nineties), I was surfing in Pacific Beach and when I exited the water this man handed me a flyer and asked me to participate in the upcoming paddle. I tried to explain to him that I suck as a surfer, catching a wave seems as much luck as anything, and no one needed me cluttering up the surf.

He was undetered. His mission: increase female participation in the event. For those who don't remember, there weren't too many women surfing back then and I guess even fewer participating in the paddle. We spoke for a while and I told him I would think about it. For reasons I can't fathom, I went that year and paddled out in a crowd of people hooting and hollering and drumming on their boards to let the world know that clean water is our birth right and we're here to be loud and proud. I got goosebumps from the collective energy and the unity between a group, which normally flies solo, joining arms for the future.

To this day I still do the paddle and I'm still friends with Tom. Only this year, the water is full of women. Two year old girls riding on their daddy's boards, grandma's and retirees laughing and gliding through the water with the love of the ocean shining in their eyes. Young women paddling up a storm and Moms paddling alongside their children. It's hard and I love it. As long as I can paddle around the OB Pier with six hundred or one thousand people, who are tired of pollution, then I know I'm alive. I'll be sore tomorrow, but for tonight if you missed the twelve foot wooden boards from the fifties, the beautiful tattoos, or the smiles on so many faces, you missed out on what community feels like.

Barak Obama on the Environment

I want to throw up. American politics suck. The candidate of the people is Cynthia McKinney - the green woman running for president. She's my candidate of choice and the candidate who espouses "Leave the oil in the soil." Now you, I and the lamppost on the corner know, she won't be living in the White House anytime soon. The power money political machine has this country too tightly harnessed for a progressive candidate. I'll be voting for Cynthia because quite frankly, I want a woman president, I want a progressive president, and I want a president who understands that our future won't come from clinging to our destructive childish ways of living, but from exploring new options and letting that good old American ingenuity run with new energy, extreme sonservation and revamped manufacturing processes. We can't compete with Asia playing old games, but we're damn good at inventing new games.

So what does this have to do with Barak and the environment? I don't claim to know what's in the man's heart, but based on what's being said out there on the campaign trail, Mr. Obama now supports drilling for oil (wars in the Middle East), extraction of clean coal (destruction of communities and black lung disease) and nuclear power (able to destroy entire regions in a single bound). WHAT THE FUCK! I thought we, as a country, were starting to realize that energy conservation and renewable energy were the ways to provide security for the American people.

So in spite of my initial excitement at Mr. Obama's nomination by the Democratic party, I guess the song remains the same, big money wins, and the United States is going to continue it's downward spiral. Are there any job openings for a database administrator in Chile?

YES! Magazine and What I Want To Be When I Grow Up

YES Magazine's tag line is "Supporting you in building a just and sustainable world" and when the latest issue arrives in my mail box I inhale the stories of the rebirth of Students for a Democratic Society, a female president in Chile, autonomous social movements in Argentina, the real scoop on energy usage, and the solutions to the health care crises in this country and I want to be one of the heroes between the covers of the 100% recycled, post-consumer waste, process chlorine-free paper, example of journalism that digs deep and uncovers the peaceful but dramatic social movements taking place under the radar of mainstream media.

As I read, I look for career opportunities that would allow me to pay my mother's caregiving bills while blending my skills in communication with my desire to be one of the people creating a future that respects the planet and the creatures who scurry across her belly. I analyze the careers people have created in their quest to save the planet and each other and try to figure out where I fit in while putting in forty hours a week in the computer trenches as a database administrator.

Once upon a time I had a quote over my desk that talked about the future as something not found, but created, the roads to it are built by those taking the journey and the journey changing both the traveler and the destination and believe it to be true. As Robert Frost said all those years ago, "I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."

My zig zag journey from the streets of San Francisco to the mission of restoring the native habitat in my ten foot by fifteen foot front yard leaves me middle aged and plodding through the woods, creating a path and dragging a hundred and twenty pound weight behind me. I tramp through the jungle looking for paths between trees and tigers and wonder how I ended up in the this part of the jungle and why. Some days I am weary and I sit down and contemplate finding the energy to climb over one more rock, traverse one more mountain range or swim across another river.

Then I read about tree sitting in South Central Los Angeles, interfaith movements of environmental activists and the purpling of America in the latest issue, grab a hold of a tree and pull myself up and get back to writing and tree planting and caring for another generation while I figure out who I want to be when I grow up.

April aka Overwhelm Your Local Environmental Activist Month

So April is drawing to an end thankfully. I used to really love April. All the flowers. The cool ocean breezes. The promise of warm ocean water and nights of fog.

Since forming the Friends of Rose Creek I've renamed April to "kill you local environmental activist month" (I left kill out of the post title as it seemed to easy to take it literally). San Diego Earth Fair is behind us. Great day. Lots of people stopped by our booth eager to learn about Rose Creek and our vision for the future. It was a twelve hour day for me not to mention the eight hours of preparation time over the prior two days. The last two hours at the fair I was doing squats in hiking boots and picking up cigarette butts, beer bottles and scraps of plastic.

Saturday is the Creek to Bay Cleanup - yet another massive day. We have a 40 yard roll off dumpster coming and hopefully 75 + volunteers to fill it in under three hours. Plus raffle prizes to give away, an ice cream social to plan. So I'm out humping for volunteers, trying to find people whose idea of an awesome Saturday morning is hauling sofas, tires and spray paint cans out of the creek. Logistics on this are huge and I haven't tracked my time.

There's trees that need to be watered weekly and a host of events I had to say no to because there is only so much a middle aged worn out woman can do. So I ask everyone, why does it have to happen in April? I know April 22 is Earth Day and having earth related events is cool. But what about March? Don't we love the earth in March? Or November or May?

I secretly suspect it is a plot to kill off environmental activists - maybe give us a heart attack or a nervous break down or leave us babbling in the corner. With the new greening of America, I would hope that loving the earth is an twelve month affair, but so far, the only real change I've seen is in corporate advertising. Go figure.

Spring on the Land

The land in question is only a seventy five by fifty foot lot in the low lands of Pacific Beach. Somehow, this land came to be mine in the eyes of the law in 2004 despite my lack of belief in owning the earth, but a person has got to live somewhere and while I can live anywhere I can fit a sleeping bag, a bike, a surfboard and a laptop computer, my wheelchair dependent mother likes a bit more in the way of creature comforts - things like indoor showers, heat and a television with fifty seven channels.

So we settled here for the rest of her life.

After the fuss of remodeling to make the bathroom and kitchen more accessible for wheelchairs, I started thinking about the land. Not that there's much. The back yard was a postage stamp of concrete and the front yard two small blocks of soil topped with bark and a couple of recently planted palm trees.

That first summer, I would sit on out on the front concrete slab in the evening and look at the bark and try to decided what to do. After a while, the land started talking to me. It wanted to be the way it was before the Americans, before the Californianos, before the Mexicans, before the Spanish Conquistadors. The land wanted to live like it lived when the footsteps of the Kumeyaay Nation and the hoof beats of Pronghorn antelope roamed the sandy banks of Rose Creek and the Great Blue Herons waded through the marshes and the American Wigeons wintered here and took flight in huge flocks that blocked the sun.

My nephew (who was eight when we moved in) and I discussed the possibility of keeping an antelope in the yard. He didn't think it was practical to have antelope in Pacific Beach, but I could keep cantaloupe instead. I have yet to take him up on his suggestion.

So I read books, listened to the wind, talked to the wealth of knowledgeable people in the area on what plants would have lived in my yard in the year one thousand five hundred. And then I planted. Dug, chopped, hauled rocks, tried to create a balance of plants to bring happiness to the land and the people living on it now. This spring the land thanks me. A carpet of bright orange California poppies, bunches of bright yellow Coast Sunflower and clumps of butter cream Beach Evening Primrose fill in the gaps. Even a purple Wild Hyacinth lurks in the corner of the yard sprung from the soil as if slumbering for generations.

Black Sage and San Diego Sagewort rub up against me as I pass and envelope me in the smell of San Diego. Even the Scrub Oak is growing, tiny tender shoots stretching up towards the sky. This is where we live, along the once upon a time shore of Rose Creek in the land of sage and the ghosts of antelope and Kumeyaay basket weavers.

To all the ancestors and the Grizzly Bears who fished the shores of the bay - spring blessings, we are listening to the words in the wind. Peace to all my relations.

Desert Wildflowers and Aging

So this weekend I dragged my movie to Borrego Springs to visit Anza Borrego Desert State Park and see the spectacular wildflowers in bloom. By movie, I mean disabled Mom in a wheelchair, her caregiver, myself, a gel filled mattress pad, a suitcase full of clothing, a canvas bag of medications, quad cane, baby monitor, food and assorted sundries.

We were only gone for two nights, but filled up a four door sedan with stuff to make sure the routine we maintain at home could be simulated at a golf resort in the desert peopled with grey haired men golfing with their younger wives.

The visitor's center now has a paved trail that runs between the campground allowing my mother to get out into the desert and observe the ant hills, Golden desert poppies, bright yellow blooms on bladder pod, the red tips of Ocotillo like miniature flags in the wind. Blankets of rust colored grass and magenta Desert Sand Vergena teasing tourists to walk slowly, look closely.

Our biggest outing consisted of rolling the entire length and back again. We were surrounded by people with grey hair, strolling about with cameras and guidebooks and I wondered what happened to my life of hiking desolate trails and hearing the voices of those who lived before me. We also drove out a dirt road and ventured thirty feet into the desert - a lot of work for me as I had to pop a wheelie with my mom's wheel chair and drag it through the sandy wash. Then we sat there, in the sand surrounded by purple, white and yellow flowers. The stark mountains rising up to the north - a few scattered bushes on the south facing slope like my scarce moments of remembering who I am.

I saw my future. It is is my present. I don't want it to be. I don't want to be another grey-haired lady dining with friends in the hotel restaurant, shopping for t-shirts, and discussing how spectacular the blooms are. I want to feel the wind speaking to me, sharing tales of vanished worlds and lives still to be lived. I want to rise at dawn and feel the stillness all around, not start my morning off cleaning up urine soaked sheets and pillows.

Unfortunately, I'm living the life of an eighty one year old woman. Early to rise. early to bed. Indoor pool exercise. Conversation for three days about the flower we saw. What's next? Dying of old age by the time I'm fifty?

On Volunteers and Coolness

OK. I admit it. I suck as a volunteer recruiter. Maybe if I was recruiting volunteers for a cookie eating contest I might have some success. But, I am a failure at getting people in my neighborhood or any neighborhood for that matter to volunteer to help pickup trash, plant natives or water the recently planted black sage or lemonadeberry along Rose Creek.

I think it’s because I’m not a bouncy cheerleadery type of person. I don’t jump up and down with enthusiasm. I don’t wear cute outfits. I’m middle aged after all and cute outfits make us older women look slightly pathetic. So I stick to the basics for outdoor work: Levi’s 501 jeans and a t-shirt from my last environmental volunteer opportunity.

On Wednesday of last week, I went to the California Coastal Commission (CCC) hearing to protest Orange County’s attempt to build a toll road through the Donna O’Neill Land Conservancy and San Onofre State Park. Don't forget, the proposed road would have put a six lane highway twenty feet from Panhe, which is an ancient Acjachemen village, currently used for ceremonial purposes and as a burial site for the Acjachemen people.

With a turnout of between two and three thousand people protesting the building of roads through parks and open space preserves, I want to know how Surfrider does it. They consistently turn out crowds for clean ups, paddles and now a recording breaking crowd for a CCC meeting. And what a turnout it was. Babies and ninety year old grandparents. Tweens and teenagers in body paint. Even Ronald Reagan was resurrected for the event. Not only was February 6 his birthday, but as Governor of the State of California, he signed the legislation creating San Onofre State Park. This is the first rally I’ve ever been to where Ronnie spoke out to protect the environment. But speak he did from t-shirts and cardboard signs and even human lips wearing Ronnie masks.

Not to go off onto a tirade against our former governor, let’s get back to the matter at hand. How to recruit volunteers? Was it the t-shirts? The free food? The surfing legends like a gray-haired Shaun Tomson who spoke in opposition to destruction of parks?

I’ve wrote newsletters, flyered the neighborhood, held ice cream socials and even provided a band – and a few people did show up, but …. At any rate, I’m decidedly uncool and not succeeding in getting the community to rally around Rose Creek.

So is there a cool event school I can go to? Maybe I should show up at cheerleading camp this summer and get a few pointers on being enthusiastic. Is there a secret handshake to get people to care about their community and volunteer to pull a weed, pour some water, pick up a piece of trash or attend a meeting?

If so, can someone please provide me with the key?

On Trees and the Future

Yesterday was the big day! Eleven trees in all planted along Rose Creek. It’s amazing how much bureaucracy goes into planting eleven trees.

First, there’s the permit. Luckily, that one was easy as the City of San Diego’s Environmental Services Department had a permit and approval from the California Coastal Commission to remove invasive plants and replace them with natives.

Then there’s the matter of the trees. So this grass roots group I’m involved with, the Friends of Rose Creek, decided we would raise two thousand dollars to purchase ten 24” box trees – trees about eight feet tall. Given that we were planting Coast Live Oak and Torrey Pine and they take forever to get big enough to throw a shadow, we wanted to start as large as we could afford. After all, if I die of old age, I only have another thirty years left; I yearned to see the oaks looking regal and majestic before someone tosses me off a boat into the sea or composts me in the backcountry.

Unfortunately, our dreams were a lot stronger than our fund raising skills and our funds amounted to ten percent of our target. So then what?

Environmental Services hooked us up! With trees and labor to plant the trees. The local utility company, Sempra, paid for seven trees. The youthful crew of the San Diego Urban Corps dug holes, planted trees and picked up trash – they even yanked a very dead duck out of the weeds. San Diego Earthworks and the Friends of Rose Creek united to purchase the two 24” box Torrey Pines that were not donated. Two small Mexican Elderberry trees were donated by me.

The tree dedication ceremony was a success with local business owners promising to donate trees in the future, local residents volunteering to help water the trees, and the local paper sending out a photographer to capture the event on film. I even discovered that one of my neighbors is also an aspiring novelist.

Yesterday was the culmination of endless meetings that seemed pointless at the time. Efforts to outreach to the community had failed to inspire people. Quarters thrown into a glass bowls at public events amounted to purchase of branches not trees. And all along, I tried to remind myself that process creates progress. One foot in front of the other with a goal in sight creates the momentum needed to move if not exactly mountains, then at least eleven trees from a nursery to Pacific Beach and eventually into the ground between Bayview Terrace Elementary and Rose Creek.

The oaks won’t mature for another twenty five years – a very long time in our instant gratification culture. While some might consider me sentimental, knowing that the children of today will explore Rose Cree and climb trees with their children in the year 2033 is one small step in my feeble attempts at creating a positive future for the seventh generation.

I know that Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai changed the course of history by motivating thousands to plant trees in Kenya and across the African continent. Well as I learned yesterday, even the planting of eleven trees has a galvanizing effect on the community.