Notes: March 23, 2012

Note: today's photos were copied from the halls and classrooms in Oakland Ca schools.

1. My pond has been found worthy – for the first time in the many years since I started the pond – frogs have gathered to sing their hearts out every night! This might not be music to everyone’s ears… but I love frog sounds! They are small Pacific Tree Frogs… but my goodness…do they have loud voices. They start at twilight each night and sing until long into the night…. I am curious to notice is their sound patterns are temperature related or if they are controlled by factors…They do stop their sounds if there is any sound or a yard light turned on... I wish them well...

Not sure if this for the benefit of the students or the teachers...

2. Also this week the first tree swallows returned (We will get cliff swallows later in the year aas well.) The first tree swallows are scouts – if it is too cold they will return to the south until warmer and then return – after one morning viewing them they were gone again.

Faculty lounge

3. What a strange year – still very dry - But there has been enough rain to allow many normal signs of spring – the blooming fruit trees, first green leaves, the progression of spring flowers… all earlier than normal this year. There are clumps of California poppies and deep blue lupines – but the grass and wild herbaceous plants are greatly reduced without normal rain. While the rest of the country has been sweltering in a March heat wave, we have had a real cold snap.

Classroom Hall

4. I urge you to take the time to listen to this rebroadcast of the Forum broadcast from KQED “The Dropout Crisis: Solutions “ This is one not to miss!

http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201203221000

Inner city student hallway

The program deals with the education realities of inner city schools. This program is of great interest to me because it describes the lives of the students and teachers in the schools where I’m supporting interns. The general population so easily blames poor people for being poor, not speaking English, being uneducated, …

Mills College exit gate

Many in the general population blame the schools – blame the students… blame the parents… but never offering positive solutions to the problems – because most people don’t understand the issues of daily life in the inner city. Most people have no idea what the vast budget cuts have done to the education system in California.

Inner city classroom wall

In fact the realities run deeply and intertwine with the lives of middle America too… Please take the time to listen to these interviews and learn more about what our American kids face, and what hard working teachers are attempting to do… What I heard here closely matches my daily observations as I visit these schools.

Inner city student's statement about High School

(Copied below)

5. "Well, high school is like a mountain for us students. We have a long way to go until we get to the top… There are times when most of our classes are getting harder and we feel like giving up…My advice for some people who are giving up is don’t stress yourself, believe in your talents, and have faith.

For me, life and making dream come true is like if you have land, and you have to work on it so you can harvest, but through all of that process you have to take care of it; that’s how life is.

I would like to graduate from high school and get a better life for my family because I want my mom to be proud of me and let her know that I didn’t waste her time. I would like people to graduate and be somebody in the future, to change the world with better people."

7th grade classroom wall

Notes March 16

I was 15 years old when I got my first real summer job. My neighbor, living across the street, worked each day at his father’s large orange farm, and each day I rode out with him to do whatever they needed help with that day. The farm soil was good – but about 2 feet down was an impenetrable layer of “hard pan “soil that had to be broken up with a special John Deer Caterpillar tractor pulling a deep digging tool – It was my job to follow along, on foot, with a sledge hammer to break up the clumps of hardpan soil.

Sign along side a country road in the San Joaquin Valley

Other times I joined a team cutting pieces of wild African orange twigs, which were then rooted in a mist chamber, and then Navel orange stock was grafted onto this superior root system. In addition I used a hoe to cut weeds, I cut their lawn once a week, and I sometimes worked in the young orange tree nursery thinning the buds that were forming on the new young trees. Valley summer weather is often over 100F and the air very dry...

The "farm" where I worked was near the Sierra foothills

The farmer routinely went to Mexico to buy and smuggle pre-Columbian art pieces back into the US…

At the end of the season I was rewarded with the extra bonus of visiting their high mountain cabin in the Sierras… this entire family was one of the most exotic I had ever encountered at that point in my life!

Me spraying a dairy drain - this was weed control so that the 'poison' could hit the water

At the age of 16 I went to work, each summer for 4 years, with the Mosquito Control agency. I started as a “sprayer” - my field operator had a region for which he was responsible – he kept track of when farmers irrigated, and then checked their fields for mosquito larvae. When he found them I went to work! I would fill my 4 gallon spray can with a mixture of Parathion spray, pump up a good head of pressure, then walk up and down the fields or pastures covering each bit with my spray. At times the soil underfoot was deep with gooey mud, and at times the sky was a-swarm with biting mosquitos. The job paid well, for a student summer job, and I enjoyed the people that I met.

My driver was a grizzled old "oaky" WWII vet– he had been in the Pacific Islands – and he had such stories to tell! He also loved old style country music and I learned a lot about different singers.

We were spraying in the Central Valley of California – we had in our zone 3 villages make up largely of seasonal fruit pickets – there were the descendants of the people described in John Steinbeck’s ‘Grapes of Wrath’ – living now in mostly tar paper shacks with tin roofs. They were poor, had no skills, often health problems, and social problems. As you zip down Hwy. 99 you will not see them – but a few miles off the road they exist to this day – with a lot of anguish and no safety net.

A country grocery store in Traver California - I bought moon pies, and coke!

Each day we sat under a scruffy “China Berry Tree” beside a little country grocery store to eat lunch – over the time I was there I got to know several of the locals and hear their stories. One old “gentleman” was a “wino” ( he got the most alcohol for his money by drinking ‘Thunderbird’), a thief, and he tried to bed every woman in town…and was frequently in the county jail for one offense or another. Still he was a jolly guy and often came to talk to us as we ate lunch. (Also we often shared our lunches with him too…) He often had little items that he had stolen that he tried to sell to us...scissors, a comb, a wrench, a sprinkler... he needed money for his next bottle of 'thunderbird'.

Country Blacksmith shop - Did hot metal repair and replacement of broken farm equipment

In my daily work, there were times I had to wade into chest deep water covered with duckweed, and walk down the middle of still water sloughs to spray… I always watched for snakes!

In my last two years I was a Dairy Drain Operator – I was given my own little green jeep – and a 100-mile day route of dairies to travel and spray drains. This put me in touch with Portuguese, Mexican, and old established Anglo farmers… I remember well the rich and varied sounds and smells of the dairy milking barns. I think it was then that I discovered that every person has a story to tell.

Valley vineyard - November

Mosquito abatement work was often exhausting but I learned to see the beauty in the arid flat planes of Central California. I must have open and shut 10000 bailing wire fence gate latches in my coming and going!

After I went away to college I had other summer jobs – but none of them as “educational” as my first jobs. I was a delivery person for a large travel agency in San Francisco and walked throughout the financial district, travelled up and down elevators, in and out of offices… hand delivering new travel tickets to customers. Office secretaries were generally polite but impersonal.

San Francisco looking west from Coit tower

For a short time, one summer, I got a job with a furnace cleaner – my employer was something of a charlatan with a fancy impressive looking suction system mounted on a truck – we made a hole in the side of the heating systems and sucked air for a while – but I don’t think it really did much good… I quit after a week…

I was a guard in the college library, checking each persons bags to make sure they were not stealing books… that was kind of fun…

San Joaquin Valley country road

Teaching is an all-consuming task that I have never worked summers in addition to teaching. Many years I took summer classes or received small grants from the National Science Foundation to take part in special training sessions.

When I reflect on my early forms of "education"... I may have gotten my knowledge in college – but I learned about life, work, and to appreciate a range of people from some of my varied early summer experiences.

Notes: Week of March 9

We humans tend to make patterns where there are none - this is a normal quartz intrusion

Photos this week are a collection representing the artistry to be found in rocks...Each rock has a story to tell, as well as beauty in itself. These rock were once sedimentary sand and gravel, then compressed and heated deep in the earth. The Sierra Mts. are mostly composed of granite, but this is typical of the older cap rock found above the granite... these are all metamorphic rocks from over 10000 ft. in Tuolumne.

Quartz veins injected into fractured granite rock

Under great pressure, the rock mass was super heated so that liquified quartz could be injected into rock cracks. The metamorphic rock was heated to a softened condition but keeping some of its original sedimentary character… At some later time conditions changed and it was able to cool.

A metamorphosed sedimentarty rock heated and contorted to produce folds

Later the rocks were raised over long periods of time by the shifting earth crust to elevate it to its present height… then erosion by water and ice have exposed it… Last, the surfaces were cut and polished by the action of glaciers into the surfaces we today…

Iron compounds leached out of parent rock and deposited on metamorphic rock

TAKING A CHANCE...

I am a gambler this time of year – We may still have cold nights with light frost – but maybe not… So I think its time to plant tomatoes!

Metamorphosed sedimentary rock, cut and smoothed by glacier action - note striations

I know the common wisdom to wit until late April or early May – but we have a south-facing wall with great heat even now – and my early tomatoes take off.

Metamorphosed sedimentary rock with quartz intrusions, then folded to form striations

Starting tomatoes is all about preparing the soil! I dig a hole for each plant at more than a foot deep and a foot wide and refill with a rich blend of organic material mixed with soil. I use compost, horse manure but you can add any good organic material.

Quartz intrusions through granitic rock, then iron compounds added

Small plants are available in the nursery now – For several years I have grown Ace and Early Girl varieties… Here in the bay area we just don’t have the heat for a good crop of most of the “heirloom varieties –

Granite was fractured, then large heated quartz intrusions added

I have tried them and while I get a few tomatoes – its just not a good crop. I can count on lots of tomatoes over the entire season. Ace tomatoes are about tennis ball size and Early Girls are a bit smaller.

Rhyolitic flow: Obsidian with a lot of ash suspended in the liquid rock, cooled at surface

I plant the small plants deep so that at least two inches of the stem above the original soil line is covered with my soil. As you plant them, create a watering ring around each one. Then soak well.

Higher quality obsidian

With my dogs I also surround each plant with 4 vertical sticks to prevent them “accidentally” lying on top of them.

The bottom end of a small glacier - Ice causes much faster shaping of rock than flowing water

And don’t forget to treat each plant with snail pellets!

Now should it be that a frost wipes them out – I’ll just do it again!

Sedimentary metamorphic rock turned 90 degrees and then cut and by glacieral action

Notes - March 2

Note: Photos this week are a random collection of odd and interesting images that I have collected over time - they have nothing to do with the content of the blog...

Note Two: I have included 3 links in the blog and urge you to open them all!

At a time when fear of foreign intervention had been “whipped up” by the party in power, the following legislation was approved and passed by the democratically elected government ... to promote “public safety and order” within the country. This “Fundamental Rights” bill was approved to temporarily suspend a number of constitutional freedoms for the "good of the people". The bill placed restrictions on or eliminated:

Personal liberty,

The right of free expression of opinion,

Freedom of the press,

The right of assembly

The right of association,

Permitted violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications,

Permitted warrants for house-searchers,

Permitted confiscations as well as restrictions on property,

Balance performer - Circa 1920

All this was permissible beyond "the legal limits otherwise prescribed".

The government was the German Reich “ … and the guiding force behind the new law was Adolph Hitler. The "danger" was later found to have been contrived - but the law stayed.

A few decades ago there was a general fear of intervention from the Communists. Let us remember that we have every bit as much to fear from an over zealous Right Wing government intruding into our lives in the near future as we had from a Communist leaning government – I listen to the candidates who would be out national leader and they give me shivers.

An abandoned mining camp - Death Valley Ca.

Do you know about "doublespeak"? It was introduced in the book "1984" about an imagined dictatorship... Read about doublespeak here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak

Watch for the examples of douplespeak coming from our Republican candidates. There cry for reducing the size of our government and decry the influence that government has in our lives.

Golden Gate Bridge - Fog

At the same time the candidates speak in support of invasive laws that would exert far greater control over the private choices of the American people...that would require a larger government to maintain. They are saying in effect, “I want my areas of big government I just don’t want your areas of big government.”

Bolivian Children - 1880

I fear for America when I see candidates calling for ever-lower taxes – You can't run a car with no fuel. Every one of our past presidents recognized the need for taking in adequate taxes to provide for the common good. The issue is really who would benefit from smaller taxes... Why, it's the same big businesses and banking industries who are paying the bills to promoting the social engineering of the American people! We know…

Graffiti Art - San Francisco Beach

The Republican party sends a memo to Fox news suggesting to them how to “spin” their news coverage to degrade the improved economic news that has surfaced in recent weeks. RNC paper suggested focusing on three things:

1. The increasing price of oil

2. National Debt

3. Unemployment

Early Coke Ad - Circa 1990

Whatever you think of John Stewart – take a look: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/01/1069337/-Jon-Stewart-exposes-RNC-collusion-memo-to-Fox-News-on-economic-talking-points Many of us have strongly suspected a link between the Republican party and Fox. This is just more evidence to support that knowledge.

Freight yard - Ship to Railcar... Portland Or.

1. Just to emphasize – No president – past present or future has the power to control the price of gasoline: Prices have increased because:

Roughly 70% of increase: Oil trades in financial markets, where Wall street firms and other big financial players dominate the trading of oil – even if they have no intention of ever taking possession of the oil whose contracts they are trading

30% Producrs and processors have control on the amount released

(Note these percentages fluctuate wildly)

Another factor is the fear of supply disruptions because of refinery problems in the US and other countries and tensions in the Persian Gulf

It is just plain dirty pool to try to pin this on the US president!

In Great Britain the price for gasoline is $7.91 for a US gallon.

2. If you want to understand why out National Debt is increasing, for goodness sakes check this site! http://costofwar.com/en/

Stonehenge ( I haven't seen this yet)

3, Employment news continues to improve:

Total nonfarm employment rose by 243,000 in January 2012, compared to an average increase of 152,000 per month in 2011.

The January employment gained in total nonfarm brings the number of net jobs recovered since a trough in February 2010 to 3.2 million jobs, or 36 percent of the 8.8 million jobs lost between January 2008 and February 2010.

So the RNC decides to focus on trumped up women’s reproductive health issues and same sex marriages as the burning issues of our time…

Commuter train - India

Revolution doesn’t have to be a swift military operation – it can be a methodical gradual building of a “critical mass” conservative mass – then the legislation to restrict freedoms can take place and hold…