Unsolved Mysteries

Soldier On

FBI.

In the spring of 1990 the car transporting Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, vocal and influential activists for the preservation of the California Redwoods, exploded.  Bari was an organizer for Earth First! a well-known environmental group formed in 1979 that specializes in non-violent direction action.  Bari was a major organizer for their Redwood Summer, a series of anti-logging protests aimed at protection of the Redwood forests and the changing of logging practices.

Bari had received a series of death threats in the months leading up to the bombing. The FBI arrived at the scene in minutes.  Injured, both Bari and Cherney were taken into custody in Oakland after the bombing and charged with transportation of an incendiary device; they were being held for bombing themselves.  Bari never recovered, remaining severely disabled for the rest of her life.  Though the charges were dropped amid clear evidence of a third party being responsible for the crime, the most compelling of which being the placement of the device directly beneath the drivers seat, the FBI and national press painted Bari and Cherney as environmental terrorists and used the incident to marginalize the entire environmental movement of the early 90's.

No other suspects have ever been taken into custody.

The image of environmental activists as crazy, dirty hippies with no jobs and nothing better to do than drugs and violent petty crimes stems from incidences such as these.  Far from the successes of other non-violent movements, civil right, and labor for instance, the environmental movement of the late 20th century was unable to garner mainstream support or respect, instead becoming increasingly caricatured and ignored.  This allowed policy makers to largely ignore the environmental movement in its totality.

Perhaps the government and big business had learned a few things before the environmental movement was realized, perhaps the social climate was not ready for another cultural revolution, maybe it was a movement ahead of it's time, lacking the rigorous research and obvious signs of climate change and species loss we now  see daily on the news.  Whatever the cause, Judi Bari, what she fought for, and almost the entirety of the movement have faded from public consciousness.  Climate change, and the fact of dwindling resources have not.

Most distressing about this is the early, pre-911 association of non-violent activism, especially environmental activism, with terrorism.  There is good reason to know about Judi Bari, and not just for the protection of the Redwoods, but for the protection of our civil rights and the freedom of speech.  The fight to save the Redwoods continues.  

References/Resources:

John Muir in 1920 on saving the Redwoods:

http://www.yosemite.ca.us/john_muir_writings/save_the_redwoods.html

The Who Bombed Judi Bari Movie Official website:

http://www.whobombedjudibari.com/

The New York Times brief review:

http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/movies/who-bombed-judi-bari-produced-by-darryl-cherney.html?_r=0

EarthFirst:

http://www.earthfirst.org/

Agate Beach

Tsunami.

One of my favorite places to go as a child was Agate Beach.  Decades ago it was a blink or you'll miss it wayside, though now it is a thriving vacation community.  It is still a secluded and lovely stretch of Oregon's all-public shoreline.  I remember long walks with my sister and Mom along the beach, wading in the tidal lagoon, and beach combing for hours.  Agate Beach was named for the spectacular abundance of agates, colorful pieces of quartz washed and polished by the ocean until they shine and transmit light.  A single walk could garner handfuls of agates, to be taken home and used in planters or as make-shift jacks.  It was common to find beachcombers hauling buckets of agates up to their cars.  Something about the shape of the beach, the nature of the source rock, and the particulars of the ocean currents has always funneled shells and stones to this tiny Oregon beach.

Yesterday we walked the length of the entire beach, and found not one.  Now the only thing that washes up on Agate Beach is remnants from the Japanese Tsunami covered with exotic and invasive species, and shards of plastic.  People still walk the beach with buckets in hand, but they are largely picking up trash.  And the public notices sign in the parking lot discourages swimming or water contact of any kind due to high bacteria count.

This makes me sad.  It serves as proof, in my own lifetime, of the damage we have done to the environment, and the consequences of our greed.  Agate Beach is gone forever.

Take nothing but pictures.  Leave nothing but footprints.  

To Volunteer or Contribute to SOLV, Oregon"s Beach Cleanup Non-Profit:

http://www.solv.org/

The Oregon Coast Management Program:

http://www.oregon.gov/LCD/OCMP/pages/ocmp_intro.aspx 

Photograph of Tsunami Debris on Agate Beach Courtesy of:

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/06/07/massive-fishing-dock-washes-ashore-in-oregon-15-months-after-japanese-tsunami/

The Sea Shepherd

Earlier this week the 9th circuit court in Portland Oregon declared the Sea Shepherd, a direct-action anti-whaling ship and its crew, pirates.  They were ordered to cease and desist their efforts to stop a Japanese whaling vessel from fishing in the Antarctic Sea.  What the Sea Shepherd does is get in the way.  They sail between whales and whaling ships, or between and in front of vessels.  It is not a safe practice.  Nor is it a form of protest the media finds new, interesting, or particularly worth reporting.

To be honest, my first response was that I could not believe the Sea Shepherd was still around.  I first heard about the Sea Shepherd close to twenty years ago when I first began working for Greenpeace.  Sea Shepherd was started by one of the original founders of Greenpeace during the early days of direct activism when Greenpeace was still known for taking to the seas.  Part of me regarded this kind of activism as a thing of the past; a tactic so clearly riddled with high stakes and gray areas that no one could possibly believe in its effectiveness.  But here they are, on video, being pressed between two ships, interviewing one another about their dedication to the movement and the environment, in court, being called pirates.  And while I want to be in support of them, the reality is that it is just so much danger, to themselves, and the other crews, and such little press coverage, that it hardly seems worth it.

This kind of activism radicalizes the environmental movement, allowing the conservative right to cast everyone concerned about climate change, resource conservation or air and water quality as first fanatics, then terrorists, and now pirates.  As much as I want to applaud their idealism, image matters.  Significant social change can only come with participation from the mainstream.  I think the time has come for the Sea Shepherd to change its tactics. 

References/Resources:

For a history of the Sea Shepherds:

http://www.seashepherd.org/whales/sea-shepherd-history.html

Greenpeace:

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/

Oregonian Article on the Ninth Circuit Court Decision:

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2013/02/sea_shepherd_whale_activists_c.html

Photo Courtesy of:
http://www.3news.co.nz/Sea-Shepherds-Bob-Barker-Steve-Irwin-rammed-by-Japanese-whalers/tabid/423/articleID/287525/Default.aspx

Soldier On

FBI.

In the spring of 1990 the car transporting Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, vocal and influential activists for the preservation of the California Redwoods, exploded.  Bari was an organizer for Earth First! a well-known environmental group formed in 1979 that specializes in non-violent direction action.  Bari was a major organizer for their Redwood Summer, a series of anti-logging protests aimed at protection of the Redwood forests and the changing of logging practices.

Bari had received a series of death threats in the months leading up to the bombing. The FBI arrived at the scene in minutes.  Injured, both Bari and Cherney were taken into custody in Oakland after the bombing and charged with transportation of an incendiary device; they were being held for bombing themselves.  Bari never recovered, remaining severely disabled for the rest of her life.  Though the charges were dropped amid clear evidence of a third party being responsible for the crime, the most compelling of which being the placement of the device directly beneath the drivers seat, the FBI and national press painted Bari and Cherney as environmental terrorists and used the incident to marginalize the entire environmental movement of the early 90's.

No other suspects have ever been taken into custody.

The image of environmental activists as crazy, dirty hippies with no jobs and nothing better to do than drugs and violent petty crimes stems from incidences such as these.  Far from the successes of other non-violent movements, civil right, and labor for instance, the environmental movement of the late 20th century was unable to garner mainstream support or respect, instead becoming increasingly caricatured and ignored.  This allowed policy makers to largely ignore the environmental movement in its totality.

Perhaps the government and big business had learned a few things before the environmental movement was realized, perhaps the social climate was not ready for another cultural revolution, maybe it was a movement ahead of it's time, lacking the rigorous research and obvious signs of climate change and species loss we now  see daily on the news.  Whatever the cause, Judi Bari, what she fought for, and almost the entirety of the movement have faded from public consciousness.  Climate change, and the fact of dwindling resources have not.

Most distressing about this is the early, pre-911 association of non-violent activism, especially environmental activism, with terrorism.  There is good reason to know about Judi Bari, and not just for the protection of the Redwoods, but for the protection of our civil rights and the freedom of speech.  The fight to save the Redwoods continues.  

References/Resources:

John Muir in 1920 on saving the Redwoods:

http://www.yosemite.ca.us/john_muir_writings/save_the_redwoods.html

The Who Bombed Judi Bari Movie Official website:

http://www.whobombedjudibari.com/

The New York Times brief review:

http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/movies/who-bombed-judi-bari-produced-by-darryl-cherney.html?_r=0

EarthFirst:

http://www.earthfirst.org/

Image:

http://myinqi.deviantart.com/art/Fuming-Redwoods-141286665

A First Lady

Birdie.

Ladybird Johnson was a reluctant and unexpected first lady.  She was unsure of her abilities as a public speaker, and aware of her place well within the shadow of Jacqueline Kennedy.  She had an unpopular husband known best for ushering us into the Vietnam era and she stepped into her role as first lady under a cloud of public grief that would mark the beginning of decades of disillusionment and social change.  She was commonly referred to as  "wife in capital letters".  She wore a lot of yellow.

But. She also played an important role in the formation and implementation of the Headstart program, which today services more than 22 million children nationwide and was essential to the formation of the Redwoods National Park.   

We assume we know people, what they stand for, what they do, and what's important to them.  That Ladybird Johnson was one of the nation's early environmentalists may surprise us speaks to our tendency to pigeonhole people, and judge them based on their most public selves.  That she so quietly accomplished so much speaks to her ability to remain true to herself, regardless of her public obligations and personal challenges.

Do what you love.  Do what's important. You never know what you might accomplish.

References/Links:

To visit the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center Website:

 http://www.wildflower.org/ladybird/

Image:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Bird_Johnson

The PBS Biography of Ladybird:

http://www.pbs.org/ladybird/

Head Start:

http://www.nhsa.org/

Stone Soup

Hash.

According to a 2012 report released by the Natural Resource Defense Council 40 percent of the food in the United States goes to waste. Much of this is in the production and marketing of pre-packed and pre-prepared foods, and much of it is due to over-sized restaurant portions. But a lot of it just gets tossed from our refrigerators because we forgot to get around to cooking it.

Food waste argues against itself. There are no good reasons to waste food, only good excuses for why it happens. I believe that one of the primary contributors to American food waste is the loss of home life and the domestic art of cooking. Sure, people still make a couple of things here and there, and we will still make a special trip to the store to try a new recipe from the Times, but the art of daily cooking, and the practice of sitting down to eat has been disappearing from our lives since the 1980's. Cooking has become a form of social action.

That we make too much food and then throw it away or let the leftovers go bad is true, but an overlooked and important contribution to food waste is in our food preparation. More specifically, because we no longer cook from scratch or with regularity, we waste more food. Vegetable ends and peels go into the trash or compost instead of a broth. Past-fresh breads and pastries are thrown out instead of cooked into a bread pudding. Leftovers and need to be eaten now items are tossed over for takeout instead of cooked into a improvised hash. Knowing how to prepare our food, what is edible and is not, how long it can be kept, or how to freeze and preserve leftovers or seasonal batches can prevent food waste as well. Do you use the lemon zest before you slice the lemon? Do you remember to toss the squeezed lemon wedges in with the chicken to season it as it roasts?

While food preparation waste may not be the largest contributor to our overall food waste, the NRDC claims that a decrease in our food waste of even 15 percent could feed 25 million Americans annually. Small changes go a long way.

The best things you could be cooking with things you might otherwise throw away:

1. hash
2. vegetable broth
3. sweet or savory bread pudding
4. veggie and cheese spreads/tapenades
5. smoothies and juices

Recipes:

Hash is an dish with protein, veggies and some kind of starch (potatoes etc.) although you can substitute a grain like rice or quinoa.

The New York Times lists lots of simple and delicious hash recipes:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/vegetable-hash-for-an-easy-dinner/

Vegetable and meat broths can be made easily from scraps and frozen until you need them. An easy starter recipe from Frugal Living:

http://frugalliving.about.com/od/makeyourowningredients/r/Vegetable_Broth.htm

Bread puddings are easy and flexible, substitute any kind of bread and add or subtract sweet and savory ingredients.

Ina Garten's Bread Pudding:

http://www.barefootcontessa.com/recipes.aspx?CookBookID=0&RecipeID=813

Veggie and cheese spreads can be made in minutes with bits and pieces of whatever you have lying around. Alton Brown has a great beginners recipe:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/roasted-vegetable-spread-recipe/index.html

Smoothies are almost infinitely variable. Better Homes and Gardens provides a great selection of recipes:

http://www.bhg.com/recipes/drinks/anytime-drinks/smoothie-recipes/

Resources/References:

NRDC Report of Food Waste:

http://www.nrdc.org/food/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf

Heavy Oil

Pipeline.

The Sierra Club was founded in 1892 and is the oldest grassroots environmental organization in the United States.  Founded by John Muir, the mission the Sierra Club is to "do something for wildness and make the mountains glad."  the Sierra Club has a reputation for being accessible to people from all points of view and walks of life and are typically considered mainstream in their methodology, preferring education, resource sharing, and lobbying over protest or contention.  The club was essential to the formation of the National Parks Service, the inclusion of the Grand Teton area as a National Park, the addition of over 45,000 acres of wilderness to the Olympics National Park, and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

This week, for the first time in its 120 year history, The Sierra Club participated in a direct action protest involving civil disobedience   48 prominent environmentalists, including the executive director of the Sierra Club were arrested after blocking the main gate of the White House in an effort to draw attention to their concerns regarding the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline.  Proposed pipeline would transport oil from the tar pits of Canada to the Gulf Coast of the United States.   

This is not a typical pipeline debate.  This is not about habitat destruction or road-less areas or even the push away from fossil fuels.  This is a simple mass balance problem. Tar sand oil produces significantly higher emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases than other forms of crude oil.  The proposed pipeline would create a dependence on this dirty kind of oil that would be the equivalent of adding over 6 million cars to the road.  In an era of fuel economy and climate change such a step, taken largely to protect national security interests and our own, obviously outdated way of life clearly runs counter to our long term well-being.

It speaks volumes that after over a century an organization that has worked so hard to mainstream itself and distance itself from the radical left in order to gain widespread support and credibility has chosen to use such bold tactics.  These are not hippies or tree huggers, these are business people, political thinkers, policy makers, and scientists; and they know that once the pipeline is built, we will use it.

We have a unique opportunity to fix an environmental problem before we create it.  Do something.

To email President Barack Obama:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments

Like what you are reading?  Then support the Kickstarter for my book Girl Gone Wild- On Being a Woman in the Wilderness.  Thanks!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1731666363/girl-gone-wild-a-guide-to-being-a-woman-outside?ref=city

"Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods. Here grow the wallflower and the violet. The squirrel will come and sit upon your knee, the logcock will wake you in the morning. Sleep in forgetfulness of all ill. Of all the upness accessible to mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains." 
- John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, (1938), page 235.

References/Links:

The Sierra Clubs Website:

http://www.sierraclub.org/

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/02/13/171943410/dozens-including-sierra-club-director-arrested-at-white-house-keystone-protest

http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/favorite_quotations.aspx

http://priceofoil.org/2013/01/17/petroleum-coke-the-coal-hiding-in-the-tar-sands/

Photo of John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt riding in Yosemite 1903:

http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/media_detail/260/

No Bull About It

Keystone.

On the morning of my 29th birthday I stepped outside onto the raised front porch of a cabin near Kenai, Alaska with my cup of coffee only to come eye to eye with a Moose.  She was huge, majestic  and clearly the dominant animal.  And she had a calf with her.  I watched them for a while, coming in and out of the treeline until they disappeared into the fog.  What I remember most from this encounter is the air of dignity that surrounded these long and lumbering creatures, the possessors of old souls.  

The state of Minnesota announced this week that for the first time in the State's history low numbers mean there will be no moose hunting season.  This comes after a six year decline in the state's moose population from over 8000 to just above 2000, a seventy percent decrease.  Worse than that, researchers are unable to identify a cause for the decline.  While climate change, hunting, and disease are likely culprits, there is no definitive evidence for a causal relationship between any of these factors and the observed decrease in the population.  

Moose, like other large, dominant species, are facing urban encroachment, declining water and air quality, weather changes, and a healthy hunting community, in the form of both humans and wolves.  They are also dependent on healthy, mature forests for their winter survival, the kinds of forests that are disappearing more and more rapidly as we increase our demand for build-able land and construction resources.  It is important to pay attention to the decline of a species that stands over seven feet tall and can weigh up to 1300 pounds because as go those large species, so goes the rest of us.  The decline of the moose is a good warning to us that there is no species that is too big to fail.  Including us.  

References Cited:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/02/07/171363250/minnesotas-moose-mystery-whats-killing-them

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/moose/

There's a Pill for That

Waterfowl.

In October of 2011 the National Center for Health Statistics released a report which stated that the number of people in the United States with prescriptions for antidepressants increased more than 400% from 1988 to 2008.  Prescriptions for amphetamine-based drugs used to treat ADD and ADHD saw a similar increase just between 1996 and 1999. Over-prescription of antibiotics has led the Center for Disease Control to call antibiotic resistance a major health problem in the U.S.  The average American takes 12 prescription drugs a year, compared to seven twenty years ago.  We are taking enough prescription drugs that they are appearing in measurable quantities in our waste water.

Sadly, our health, mental or physical is no better.  We are overweight and unhappy, and choking in the cost of our own medical care.  We still love MacDonald's and beer and we still don't exercise.  Our use of prescription drugs has become a symptom of our greater illness.  Take pause. Take a walk.  Take care of yourself.  Sometimes there is no magic pill. 

References Cited:

http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/astounding-increase-in-antidepressant-use-by-americans-201110203624

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/medicating/drugs/stats.html

http://www.chrt.org/publications/price-of-care/issue-brief-2011-02-antibiotic-prescribing-and-use/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/20/healthcare-drugspolicy

A Walk In The Woods

saunterer.

A long weekend and the beginning of summer do a lot to remind us to go outside, breath the fresh air, listen to the birds, stretch our legs, and experience wildness. I think it’s important, amid the beer, fireworks, weenie roasts, and recreational vehicles that mark the American camping experience, to make sure that we do just that, stretch our legs and experience wildness. It’s not often anymore that the majority of us find ourselves away from the crush of noise, information, and development that comes with “civilized society”, and I think our distance from the wild plays a key role in our health and well-being, and our decision making as a people. Distancing ourselves from the wild is part of why we are able to devalue the environment, and that devaluation reveals itself in our politics, policies, and way of life. It allows us to waste resources, diminish habitat, allow entire species to go extinct, and engineer our bodies and our food.

I feel at my most engaged in the environment when walking through it. A walk in the wilderness does more to ease my mind, body, and soul than almost anything else. And it reminds me, in a tangible and profound way, that I am connected to this place, this world, this land, that it sustains me. Thoreau, in his 1862 essay, Walking, had this to say about the value of a walk in the woods, “I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering; which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the middle ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going à la sainte terre" — to the holy land… They who never go to the holy land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds, but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering.”

We can make no progress in the improvement of our daily lives, in the fostering of health, community, sustainability, or peace, until we acknowledge and embrace our connection to the wilderness. Take a first step, take a walk.

To read the full text of Thoreau’s Walking:
http://thoreau.eserver.org/walking.html

To Read Emerson’s Nature:
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/emerson/nature-emerson-a.html#Chapter%20I

Photo courtesy of:
http://dinabloomphoto.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/edith.jpg