Interesting Links for 02-09-2012

• Inspiration from Portland’s Neighborhood Greenways | Central Seattle Greenways
  
  Members of Central Seattle Greenways visited Portland to study their system and see what could be applied here.
  (tags: urban restoration urbanism bicycles pedestrians greenways )




• 6 of the Oldest Trees in the World – Mental Floss
  
  Old trees — some very beautiful, some as gnarly as I would have expected.
  (tags: Trees science Oldest trees nature )




• Madrids Atocha Station Doubles as an Indoor Botanical Garden and Turtle Sanctuary – StumbleUpon
  
  A train station has a tropical botanical garden in it, which includes a swamp and a turtle sanctuary.
  (tags: urbanism urban restoration urban forest )




• Climate change deniers ‘are either extreme free marketeers or conspiracy theorists’ – Telegraph
  
  Climate change deniers also tend to believe things like the moon landing was faked, the CIA killed Martin Luther King, and other conspiracy theories.
  (tags: global-warming environment denialism Dogma globalwarming psychology conspiracy )




• Old Ways Help Iowa Farmer Beat Drought
  
  Crop diversity, manure fertilizing, and other “old-fashioned” practices help this farmer stay afloat in the drought.
  (tags: farming sustainable diversity )




• Judgmental Insects in Mozambique – Slide Show – NYTimes.com
  
  Some beautiful pictures of insects from a wildlife preserve in Mozambique nearly destroyed by civil war.
  (tags: macrophotography photography insects entomology Africa Mozambique E.O. Wilson biophilia conservation )




• Science demands that you stop calling this kid the ‘Marmot Whisperer’
  
  Why the cute kid with the marmots says more about human intrusion into wilderness and habituation than anything else. Marmots are pretty far from shy.
  (tags: marmots anthropomorphism intrusion habituation )

Mirrored from Nature Intrudes. Please comment over there.

Why: Why me?

I’ve been kind of a dilettante most of my life. Never had a career, just had jobs that funded various hobbies. Several times I’ve been excited enough by a New Thing to think this, this is what I want to do with my life.

But there’s an important common thread, whether it was mail art, zines, celebration arts (ie, Fremont Solstice Parade and other events the Fremont Arts Council sponsors), physical theater, photography, and now forest stewardship/restoration.

All of these activities had a low threshold for entering. You can do a zine with just a pen and paper. Glue stick, scissors, and typewriter are helpful but not necessary. And they had a high ceiling for ambitions. For instance, SubPop started out as a zine in the 80s, then they did a couple cassettes of NW bands, then they did a couple singles…

So it is with forest stewardship: The threshold for entering is to show up and pull ivy (or other weed). That can lead you into any number of areas: Urban restoration, urban forestry, target forest types and plant communities, community outreach, traditional ecological knowledge.

I have a lingering fear that I’ll walk away from forest stewardship the way I’ve walked away from so many other things in my life. But the only way to find out if that will happen or not is to fully commit to it wherever I am in the process.

Mirrored from Nature Intrudes. Please comment over there.