Invasive species

This is my ode to the garden snail, a creature that is a current constant in my life, due to the fact that we are still having spring rains here in Berkeley. In fact, we've had 131% our normal rainfall this year so far (source: Weather Underground), and I am bound by my drought-training to utter a hallelujah.  But, even so, it's tough to embrace the joy when I walk outdoors in the morning and see these intrepid mollusks gliding across my garden making their slimy ways to my tender plants.

According to UC's Agriculture and Natural Resources Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program, "The brown garden snail, Cornu aspersum (formerly Helix aspersa), is the most common snail causing problems in California gardens. It was introduced from France during the 1850s for use as food." In other words, these puppies are escargots!

For citrus growers, ANR recommends these approaches:
a) pruning "tree shirts"
b) copper foil
c) predatory decollate snails and
d) ducks (!)

The vision of a flock of ducks in amongst the orange or lemon trees is really quite delightful, don't you think? On the other hand, introducing a new batch of decollate snails (these ones are from Egypt) to deal with the old batch of snails just sounds just plain goofy. Oh, and, if they aren't getting enough escargots, they will eat your plants too.

So, the ANR has an alternative set of instructions for the hapless home gardener.
a) handpicking
b) trapping (in beer, especially)
c) copper foil
d) poisonous bait (yuck!)

This hapless home gardener does two things: first, I put cocoa-hull compost around all my vegetable plants. Snails and slugs don't like to crawl across the scratchy surface. As a bonus, when the compost begins to degrade, it forms a crust, which tends to dissuade the neighborhood cats from using my raised beds as kitty litter boxes.

My second plan of action is the recommended handpicking. It is slightly gross, I have to admit--better with gloves. I tend to toss the buggers into the street where they are crushed by passing cars and bikes. Like I said, it's gross.

Now, I started this rant with the claim that it was an ode to the garden snail. It's time to offer the following meditation:

What is an invasive species, really? According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an "invasive species" is defined as a species that is

1) non-native (or alien) to the ecosystem under consideration and
2) whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health. (Executive Order 13112)." The definition goes on to say, "Human actions are the primary means of invasive species introductions."

So, humans introduce a new species to an environment, and if it causes environmental or human harm, it is invasive. Let's see... As I mentioned once before, my brother and I participated in a genetic testing project revealing that our ancient forbears had traveled from Africa to Asia and then Europe, like most Caucasians. In fact, the march of early humans out of Africa involved them introducing themselves to new environments, causing environmental damage and damage to each other over and over again. Indeed, we continue to do it today, don't we?

I need a new bumper sticker: Invasive species: it takes one to know one!

The Old West Gun Room

I've just returned from my (first) visit to the Old West Gun Room just on the border into El Cerrito, CA.

I've eyed this place for years, wishing they sold something I wanted to buy, just so I had a reason to go in. I mean--look how cute it is!

Well...the day had dawned. As I explained in a earlier posts, I'm learning to shoot a rifle so I can hunt wild boar. After practicing at the range in Milpitis, I've been thinking that I'd probably benefit from having a coach or trainer, both for learning how to shoot and  how to hunt boar. In addition, no shooting ranges closer than Milpitis will rent a rifle, meaning that sooner or later I'm going to need my own gun.

So, off I went to the Gun Room. I was nervous. Who would be there? A bunch of NRA types? Who are these NRA types, anyway? To calm the butterflies, I decided to make things simple and just ask for advice.

When I walked in, there were two men at the counter talking to the owner, Bob Weaver. I recognized him from his photo on the website. Bob and the other two guys looked like regular people. If you saw them in the grocery store, you would not be able to distinguish them from anybody else--you would not know that these guys were gun owners, or, and the website says, "firearm enthusiasts."

While they completed their conversation, I walked around the store. Aesthetically, the Old Gun Room is to Target Master West, where I'd practiced shooting, like a locally owned boutique is to a fast food franchise.

Once I had Bob to myself, he was extremely helpful. I explained my interest in boar hunting and my lack of experience. He gave me the card for a woman who is a firearms instructor and also provides wild board guide services. I also asked him about rifles--the type I would need and the cost range. He rattled off a baffling list of numbers, and I asked to see some examples, because I really didn't know what he was talking about.

He showed me three rifles and told me that "any basic deer hunting rifle will work fine for boar." The budget for this kind of thing is $400 to $500. Then, in a good salesmanship move, he added, "you know, every boy and girl should have a 22." That was the kind of rifle I shot down in Milpitas, the one that felt like a bb gun.

I think I can live without a 22. But, I did tell him I'd be back. My next step is to contact Denise King, the woman who may become my coach.

Talking trash

I read in the New York Times last week that "Europe Finds Clean Energy in Trash, but U.S. Lags." It seems that, in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, especially, garbage is now viewed "as a clean alternative fuel rather than a smelly, unsightly problem." This is due to large energy plants that burn household and industrial waste. "Their use has not only reduced the country’s energy costs and reliance on oil and gas, but also benefited the environment, diminishing the use of landfills and cutting carbon dioxide emissions. The plants run so cleanly that many times more dioxin is now released from home fireplaces and backyard barbecues than from incineration."

Europe has some 400 such plants, with more under construction. Denmark alone has 98, serving a country of only 5.5 million people. By contrast, the United States, with more than 300 million people (as you know, we're still counting), has only 87 plants, almost all 15 or more years old.

Where does our garbage go, then? In New York, the answer is landfills. "New York City alone sends 10,500 tons of residential waste each day to landfills in places like Ohio and South Carolina." (italics mine) New York has a population of 8,008,278 (2000 census).

In Alameda County, like San Francisco to the west, we're taking a two-fold approach. We want to reduce the amount of solid waste we produce, but what we do produce, we put in...landfills! Berkeley's solid waste "production" was 91,008 tons in 2008, or 249 tons per day, from a population of 102,743 (2000 census) That amount represents a decline according to the 2008 Alameda County Waste Characterization Study. "Overall annual solid waste quantities within [Alameda] County have decreased by approximately 24 percent since 2000, with the greatest decrease (based on weight) represented by the City of Oakland and the greatest percentage decrease represented by Emeryville and Albany."

Even so, we generate more trash per person than our East Coast counterparts. New Yorkers make some .13 tons per person per day, and we Berkeley folks churn out some .24 tons per person per day. Oakland does better at .18 tons per person per day.

Returning to the resistence to waste-to-energy conversion plants, aka trash-burning, the article in the Times identifies American popular antagonism as having three causes: "relative abundance of cheap landfills in a large country, opposition from state officials who fear the plants could undercut recycling programs and a 'negative public perception.'"

What really amazes me about the "negative public perception" is this: when I was a little girl, trash burning in the back yard was an ordinary thing. You grew a hedge at the back of your yard to hide the brick or stone rubbish bin, and once a week or so, someone went out there and set the garbage on fire. It smelled bad and made black smoke, but virtually everybody did it.

Not everything burned, of course. I can remember poking through the ashes and finding charred wads of tinfoil. It looked ancient, transformed into an artifact, something I could pretend had a secret story to tell, not simply the leftover covering from a meatloaf or maybe a jiffypop top. You might say that, when it came to trash burning, we Americans had an In-My-Back-Yard approach right up until the Clean Air Act was passed in 1963, putting a stop to those backyard hijinks.

Seven years later, in 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency opened its doors, and today the EPA actually has a Backyard Trash Burning website! This page explains all the problems with trash burning--for example: it turns out kids like to poke around in those ashes, and they're toxic, gosh darnnit! As a bonus, the site features a link to Bernie the Burn Barrel--don't you just love public service mascots?

In other words, today, we find ourselves in the situation of having gone through a societal IMBY-to-NIMBY conversion. Remarkable!

Besides apparent distaste, the other opposition to the fancy new trash burners is Big Environmentalism. The argument goes like this: the energy plants create a market for trash when our goal should be zero waste. That's what I call making Perfect be the Enemy of Good! Nearly every week, I have to consign to the trash (aka "landfill destination bin") the containers that the City of Berkeley will not collect for recycling, because they claim they can't find a buyer for those types. These include any and all plastics that aren't classed #1 or #2. I try to buy strategically to avoid these plastics, but it simply is not always possible.

Here's my question: Why not be making energy from this stuff? Let's put one of these new burners in Berkeley. Looks like we have the tonnage to spare.

Sprung!

Having grown up in a place with "real" winter (Chicago), and having made a recent visit to New York, I've been reminded this year that March and April are a transition months. In the Chicago of my childhood, March especially, was quite unreliable, and featured dirty, salty snow banks. Walking to school was a messy, wet operation.

In early April, you would look almost desperately for signs of bright colors. I wrote last week about a "dark unclear space" and I am thinking this week that the bursts that renewed life makes onto winter's scene are just as mysterious and magical.

On one of my days in New York, I took the wrong subway to met Nathan at Columbia, meaning that I had a longish walk to campus. It was a good thing, because it meant I passed by a churchyard with this lone forsythia in bloom, blazing yellow against the dark stone walls.
 
This is the first year I've heard Nathan, a native Californian, ever express joy at seeing trees bud and bloom. He is seeing them with new eyes, having slogged through his first winter of chill and snow. He is going through his own blooming.
 

Practically as soon as I got back in town, my sister visited me here in Berkeley. She still lives outside Chicago, and to her, it is wildly green here right now. My yard is looking good right now, with the wisteria and California poppies in bloom. What I was most happy for her to see were the blooms on the Western Redbud tree I have in the backyard, shown here on the right. I planted this little native sweetheart after my mother died, and I put a locket of her hair in the earth underneath it. My mother was a big treehugger from way back, and I know that many trees have been planted in her honor, by her children and all her friends.

In my front yard right now, next to my garlic, I have brave new Dragon Carrot sprouts. I ordered the seeds from the Seed Savers catalog. They are supposed to be red when they are all grown up. We'll see!

All this growth is plain wonder and mystery! And to top it all off, across the street, a baby boy was just born! Little Philo. How about that?

Life just takes the cake. Or pie, depending on your point of view.

Human sacrifice

On my recent trip to New York, I had a spiritual experience of a particular sort. It happened on Friday when I was visiting the campus of New York University. April 2, 2010, was the second-to-last day of an art show at the Grey Art Gallery. The show was Downtown Pix: Mining the Fales Archives, 1961-1991.

Earlier in the day, I'd had the opportunity to meet the Director of the Fales Library and Special Collection, Marvin J. Taylor, as my colleague and friend Jennifer Vinopal was giving me a tour of NYU's Library. I'd made a mental note to come back to the show after Jennifer and I went our separate ways. Taylor has been collecting the work of artists, playwrights, choreographers, photographers, and activists of New York's downtown scene since 1994. The show "reveal(ed) the vital intersections of experimental theater, performance and installation art, graffiti, punk rock, and sexual liberation." (I'm quoting the show brochure.)

As I walked downstairs to the lower level, I encountered the moving work of Fred McDarrah who covered New York's Gay Pride Parade every year from its inception for the Village Voice.

And then, suddenly, I came upon David Wojnarowicz's photographs and silent films. He worked in the late 1980's and early 1990's at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. The installation included a film running in a loop of Wojnarowicz's lover's last moments and then his prone body, draped in a sheet, and carried by four or five men from a table to a dark, unclear space.

I stood still, watching this, aware that the hour approached 3:00 p.m. on Good Friday, and I wondered: what turns a death into a sacrifice? Did Wojnarowicz's lover die for a purpose, as I was taught to believe about the Nazarene carpenter?

And what about all those other young men who died so young? After all this time, I must say I have not discerned any meaning.

I remember the late '80s and early 90's well. We lost Iris's brother Jon and our friend Kevin Lally in 1993. Indeed, everybody we knew lost someone or many someones. Even though there is a great temptation to make some sense of death, it looks to me now very much as Wojnarowicz depicted it: simply a dark unclear space we are left to ponder.