Whidbey Island Field Trip

On February 16, 2010 the Earth Stewards Program led by professors Robert Smurr and Robert Cole, took a field trip to Whidbey Island in conjunction with the text Land Use, Environment, and Social Change: The Shaping of Island Country, Washington by Richard White.


Here are a few pictures of the area:
(audio on)

Dollar Menu

One thing that bothered me about the movie Food, Inc. was the excuse making of the family of four featured in the "Dollar Menu" segment. They claimed there was no money for food but in one trip though the drive-up they spent over $11 on garbage food packed in garbage wrappers and cups and placed in garbage bags so they could drive their big mini van as they ate. At the store they turned down two healthy pears in favor of a $.99 burger. This is nonsensical. It is proof that healthy eating is as much a mindset as it is a matter of finance. I do not mean to be unsympathetic, but the lady said that in the past they did not know the food was unhealthy...now the father's livelihood is threatened by diabetes and blindness and they are paying large amounts for medications to treat a preventable disease yet still they go to the junk food store, the only difference is now they feel bad about it.
Below is a picture of their choices, unhealthy sandwiches full of feed lot meat and refined grain, and soda pop loaded with sugar and high fructose corn syrup. Also pictured is an alternative. For less money the makings of four very healthy meals with enough left over to make the cost of the next four meals even less.

They bought five cheese burgers, two chicken sandwiches, two small Sprites and one large Dr.Pepper. Total cost: $11.48.
I bought a large organic yam, a bag of organic brown rice, a head of organic cabbage, a bunch of organic kale, three organic carrots, a small bag of organic dry beans and one organic apple, total cost: $10.26

The Temporary Vegan.

As part of my research project I have adopted the vegan eating plan for the duration of the time I spend working on the project. I estimate approximately 6 to 7 weeks. I call it a bit of practical research since it is always easy to come up with academic theories...sometimes not so easy to implement them. It is not that I have any doubt that a healthy vegan diet is possible, but is it actually doable for the average person (like me) in todays vertically integrated, corporate controlled food production and distribution system?

I set out to discover the shortest route to the East side food co-op. The West side co-op is closer but it is more limited so I wanted to have routes to both locations. My usual strategy is to use the car to find the place the first time so I know where it is, and then cycle it from then on.

Here is the car route/bike route from west Olympia to east.




My first grocery bill looked like this (below)...
There are several items on it that I could have done without if I had a few kids and needed to spend that money on other items. The trail mix, for instance, could have been an extra few pounds of whole grain hot cereal.

Watercolor Walk (in Bluegrass) or; The Blair Walk Project.

It is a 2-1/2 mile walk from my apartment to The Evergreen State College and it takes me about 45 minutes. I tried to compress the walk down to under five minutes and I got The Watercolor Walk. I suppose I could just as easily have titled it "my crummy software can't speed up video clips without blowing them out" but Watercolor Walk has a nicer ring to it.

Winter Break.

Sometimes it is necessary to get a complete change of scenery in order to get a new perspective. With my "introductory" quarter at school behind me things are just going to get more and more intense so it was now or never for this trip. This setting gave me the sense of focus and clarity I needed to chart a course forward. Of course it has rained non stop every day since I have been back so that sense did not last but!... I wrote it all down!
Here are a few slides of the island of Kauai. I spent most of my time on the east shore near Kapa'a.



Slide show notes: The animal first shown in a slide at 1:14 is a Monk Seal. These are an endangered species due to loss of food sources and global climate changes. It is very rare to see on of these as far in as Kauai but it is becoming more common as their habitat changes. When a monk seal is spotted like this a response team is dispatched to make sure it is ok and to keep people away from it. I had a long talk with one of the members of the response team and according to him, a gun-happy poacher killed two of them last year just for the fun of it. There are only a few thousand left. The one I saw is a pregnant female taking a nap after a long, long swim.

More on Hawaiian Monk Seals

The chickens and roosters are all over the place on Kauai, running wild. There seemed to be a lot more roosters than hens so I don't know if the hens get used for dinner more often but the cock-a-doodle-doo of the roosters goes on all day long. This is a non-native species but I guess it is not considered invasive and they don't seem to cause any ecological harm. No one seems at all concerned about the big chicken population.

Drive South

(click on images for larger view)

After a soggy week in the Olympic rain forest I had a craving for somewhere sunny and dry so I am road tripping it in California until school starts up again in a week or so.
Here's a little hill I passed along the way. I can't tell if the picture turned out or not because the screen on this little laptop does not look like a normal monitor.










Here is a shot of the site where I camped.
It was a hike-in site (no cars) so it was mostly quiet except for the occassional noisy human...







...and a crow who was determined to annoy me every morning until I gave it some food (which I did not do).











This is the river that ran through the area as it is emptying into the Pacific Ocean...







Then after the sun went down it got dark very quickly.












A couple of nights I built a campfire and sat close to it because, although it was in the 70's during the day, once the sun went down it cooled off quickly and dropped to the upper thirties over night.






And after my week in the cold, wet rain forest on the Olympic Peninsula, this is the reason I went in the first place...

Olympic Peninsula

I just got back from a four day field trip with The Earth Stewards Program. We visited the Lower and Upper Elwah Dams, both of which are slated for removal some time in 2012. We also spent time in the rain forest and on the beaches of the untamed Washington coast. The power went out one night and left us in the dark. It was very nearly a monsoon with 80 mph winds driving the rain like bullets fired from a gun.
Here is a picture of a driftwood tree that washed up on the beach near our lodgings, taken after sundown. More pictures and video clips to follow.

Olympia Film Festival

Today I went down to The Olympia Film Festival presented by the Olympia Film Society (of which I am now a card carrying member) being held at The Capitol Theater. I wanted to see every movie on the docket for today but ended up seeing three. A movie at noon, a movie at 2:30, then a 4 pm dinner at Darby's Cafe which is located directly across from the Capitol Theater. I went home for an hour or so and came back for the 7 pm movie. The noon movie was Unmistaken Child , which is a film about the search a few years ago for the reincarnation of a Buddhist monk. I was interested in the numerous scenes of remote villages that Tenzin Zopa visited on his search for the reincarnated Tibetan master.
The 2:30 movie was called Alice. I think this is a Czechoslovakian film based on the story Alice in Wonderland. I'm going to say the jury is still out on whether I liked this movie or not. I think it would have been an excellent movie to see stoned to the bone because it was so odd and unexplainably quirky that I think it would have been a trip.
At 7pm I saw The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle by David Russo - a film maker from my home town of Seattle. I wanted to go right out and buy cookies. This was a funny and bizarre movie. It dealt with garbage and with the nature of modern day food using a squad of night janitors as a foil.

I have three movies left on my partial pass but I have not figured out which movies I will see . The film festival goes through November 14th so I have time to decide. Check it out if you're in Olympia this week.

And have a snack at Darby's. A classmate of mine works there but she was not there today. Some guy who called me "Doctor" (???) waited on me. Except for the "Doctor" thing he was a great waiter and the food was delicious.

Field Trip Number Two

From Monday, October 12 to Friday October 16 the Earth Stewards: Sustainable Living in a Threatened World Program took a field trip to the Columbia River, two dams and the Scab lands area. Led by Professors Rob Cole and Robert Smurr we visited various locations in in the Columbia River area in Central Washington. The focus was on the Columbia River, the effects of the dams on the "natural" environment and on the salmon as well as the effects of the great Missoula Lake Floods and how they formed the region. The first night we stayed at Brooks Environmental Learning Center. It was bitterly cold and it snowed in the morning. The remaining days we stayed at Banks Lake Resort. This was a posh resort near Grand Coulee Dam.
It was a five day field trip. I admit that I had more than a little trepidation at the prospect of spending five days in the field with forty people I barely knew, all of whom were nearly half my age, but my worries were for nothing as this group proved to be a very cool, understanding, witty and intelligent bunch. I have posted a few pictures below and will add to the album as I process the pictures I took. (below)

I had to downgrade the quality of the pictures for this slideshow because my computer did not have the processing power to handle the larger images but individual still images are available in a higher quality for anyone interested

Field Trip to Local Area

Yesterday the Earth Stewards: Sustainable Living in a Threatened World Program took a field trip to the Olympia area. Led by Professors Rob Cole and Robert Smurr we visited various locations in Olympia and the surrounding area with the focus on land and water usage (or mis-usage as the case may be). This field trip also served as a warm-up for the five day trip next week.
We could not have asked for better weather. Blue skies and sunshine with a temperature hovering around 60 degrees all day.
The trip lasted approximately six and a half hours. I tried to compress the gist of it into a five minute slide show (below).

Today in downtown Olympia

Downtown Olympia today. Fall color is starting to come on...

Welcome to a new year at Evergreen!

Evergreen is known for it's (deserved) reputation for embracing diversity but it is not a common occurrence (a least in my world) for my own ethnic heritage to be acknowledged along with so many others so the opening ceremonies of the Convocation, on the Friday before classes started, was gratifying to me.