Category Archives: What I’m reading

The week that was

Posted in Climate change, University life, What I'm reading by

This week I:

– saw a banana slug on my way to class – the first one I’ve seen since I’ve been able to call the banana slug my school mascot!

– made a loaf of rye buttermilk bread from this newly released cookbook.  Yum!

– took advantage of an office-mate’s recommendation to back up my computer with Carbonite.  Besides backing up your files, it also lets you access everything on your computer anywhere you have an internet connection. Awesome!

– after two and a half years of revisions, submitted an article based on my master’s research findings to its first academic journal.  I felt proud and productive for about 45 minutes, and then fell into a sad, empty kind of state.  My writer and researcher friends tell me this is common.  : (

– guided my students into the murky waters of writing a literature review. So far so good.

– had some of my photos published as an accompaniment to an article on the recent agreement to allow California industries to offset their pollution by purchasing pollution credits in Chiapas, Mexico and Acre, Brazil. Check out the backstory in my post.

– read the following in preparation for the Supreme Court case on climate change that was heard on Tuesday. (Now I need to find out what the actual verdict was, and how it impacts the case in Alaska I described in a recent post)

– got a phone call from the post office saying that my new bees had arrived in the mail!  They are now settled safely into their new diggs, and being, well, busy little bees.

– indulged my fantasy of being a scholar-farmer by doing some grading at 5th Crow Farm.  The fantasy part, however, doesn’t involve my car smelling like PSG after lending a hand with errands (that’s Peruvian Seagull Guano for those of you not in the know). It also doesn’t involve the earth trying to eat my shoes as I navigate the mud in my “stylish and inappropriate” footwear of choice: clogs.

– realized, again, that nothing makes me feel incompetent faster than trying to hang out with farmers while they are working.

Bees at the post office – in the box they were shipped in

What do people from California have in common with people from Chiapas?

Posted in Climate change, Environmental justice, Photography, What I'm reading by

What do people from California have in common with people from Chiapas?  Read Jeff Conant’s latest article on AlterNet today to find out!  Be sure to check out the slideshow that accompanies it too – it includes some of my photos from the San Joaquin Valley.  Some of them have already been published elsewhere and some are new (like the one below).  All were chosen by the author to help readers visualize some of the toxicity problems in the San Joaquin Valley so they might better understand why some Valley residents participated in the recent lawsuit against California’s Global Warming Solutions Act.  See my other post on this topic here.

Jeff used to be my boss at the Hesperian Foundation when we worked on this book together (Spanish translation coming soon!).  He came to Hesperian after getting booted out of Mexico for, as I understand it, the crime of volunteering on small scale water distribution systems in Zapatista communities in Chiapas.  I left Hesperian to get a master’s degree at UC Davis, where I researched the Central Valley environmental justice movement.  Through the twists and turns of current events, our working lives have crossed paths again, this time through concerns about how a policy designed to slow climate change might negatively impact poor people in both California and Chiapas.

In our past life together, Jeff’s job was to write a book and mine was to get it illustrated, so providing photos for his article this week was a fun twist on an old theme.

power lines

Is my furniture trying to kill me?

Posted in What I'm reading by

Is my furniture trying to kill me?  This question has been lurking in the back of my mind ever since I met Arlene Blum of the Green Science Policy Institute several years ago, and it’s not a comfortable thing to think about each time I time I flop down on my sofa after a long day at work.

My science writer friend Erik Vance just published an article in Scientific American on the science behind toxic flame retardants used in furniture foam.  The occasion for the piece is a current legislative proposal intended to reduce the amount of flame retardants in California furniture.  (Don’t worry, supporters of the bill say the flame retardants weren’t doing that much to keep your house from burning down in the first place, and anyway, the toxic fumes from the flame retardants would kill you before the fire would).

Toxic exposure isn’t really something you can buy your way out of, but if you want to give it a shot, check out these furniture purchasing guidelines.

You might also enjoy reading about the wild life that Blum has led as a scientist and mountain climber, I know I did!