Geography of the James (Earth Lodge)

Last summer I had a job which required me to drive around Virginia Beach restaurants picking up trash cans full of rotting oysters.  I cannot even begin to describe the smell!!!  It was certainly a humbling experience.  It had a really cool cause though.

The company that I worked for was called Lynnhaven River Now.  They do a lot to conserve the Lynnhaven Oyster, which for a while was inedible and becoming endangered due to pollution.  The Lynnhaven Oyster is really the only edible seafood that comes from the Lynnhaven River, so it’s a tourist must when it comes to eating out in Virginia Beach.

There are two main issues with saving the Lynnhaven oyster population: 1) Reduce Pollution and 2) Protect the oysters when they reproduce.  My summer job tackled Issue #2.  Oysters need other oysters or hard surfaces to latch onto when they reproduce.  This project was a way to return the shells to their natural habitat, which maintained the natural setting of the river as well as provided a better breeding ground for the once threatened oyster species.

I would drive around to restaurants with a tractor trailer, dumping sloshy, maggot-ridden cans of picked apart oysters into crates.  There were 19 restaurants that participated in this “Save Our Shells” program.

So, once I had all the smelly oysters in the back of the tractor trailer, I would go to the city landfill and dump each crate one by one into a dumpster.  By the end of the summer, we had filled three dumpsters with oysters.  Each trip totaled to about a thousand pounds of oysters- which is actually insane.  This was all done in above 100 degree weather.

The reason for the oyster dumpsters was to allow them to dry out and get sunbleached so they didn’t smell so terrible.  So basically I had the dirty work.  Once they were all dry and pearly white, other people in the group would take the oysters and dump them back into the river.  They formed oyster reefs, which is kind of like a coral reef for baby oysters.  In nature, seagulls eat oysters and drop their shells in a reef formation.  This dumping of the recycled oysters mimicked that process.

So, that is what I did this summer.  It was crazy-disgusting but it was something that I was passionate about.  It kind of reminds me of revegetating a coal mine spoil.  The goal is to bring the original natural setting back to a place that has been damaged by man.

I just thought I’d share this with you guys…most people don’t really know much or care about oysters.  If you have any questions, consider me your shellfish expert.

-Grace

On Saturday I volunteered with the Sierra Club at the Environmental Film Festival.  My main job was to hand out programs, offer people raffle tickets, and get people to sign a  petition asking Obama to be proactive about climate change. Initially I was a little anxious because I really didn’t know that much about Obama’s clean energy policies. Besides from the occasional article, this was new to me. I was interested in climate change, yet I was not an expert by any means.

The points brought up in the petition include to finalize a carbon, mercury, and air toxics pollution standards for new power plants, limit carbon pollution from existing power plants, and create a new ozone pollution standard.

I felt since I was advocating these points and asking others to pledge to fight for them, I should be more knowledgeable about the subject. Below are a couple of facts I looked up!

• Power plants are currently the dominant emitters of mercury (50 percent), acid gases (over 75 percent) and many toxic metals (20-60 percent) in the United States.
• The final emission standards will result in: preventing about 90 percent of the mercury in coal burned in power plants being emitted to the air; reducing 88 percent of acid gas emissions from power plants; and reducing 41 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants

http://www.epa.gov/airquality/powerplanttoxics/basic.html

Yet, I also realized that many of the people going to the film festival and signing the petitions weren’t experts. If they were experts they probably wouldn’t be going! They were here to learn. They may not have known everything about the current clean energy policies or specifics of climate change, yet they wanted to help. And at the end of the day, an expert’s signature on our petition form is equal to the signature of someone who is not as well informed. You do not need to be an expert to get a point across; you simply need to be invested and passionate.

James Balog, lead director of EIS, is a testament to this fact. In the film Chasing Ice he explains how he studied environmental science, yet didn’t like how modern science was centered on statistics. So instead he learned how to capture miraculous natural moments via a camera.  This newfound skill resulted in the creation of Chasing Ice, an incredibly powerful movie documenting melting glaciers in Iceland and Greenland.  He has reached a vast number of people and has shown them never before seen footage including the process of ice caps melting, crashing into the sea, and permanently receding. It is humbling to think this wondrous film started with a simple idea.

There is also a point in the film which I found particularly powerful, not for its breathtaking images, yet for a brief moment when James Balog speaks to his children. He says he wants his children to be able to watch the film and realize their father was advocating climate change awareness. He wasn’t passively sitting around, he was acting. Most of the time, people (myself included) believe in something, such as a strong sense of stewardship for the planet we live on, yet do not act on it. Largely, the most common excuse is, I am just one person, what can I do? Today, I saw normal, everyday people acting on beliefs. They were educating themselves, which will likely lead to them educating others. Simply by going to see a movie and signing a petition they were making a difference.

I would like to encourage everyone to watch at least part of one of the films they showed and share it with someone else. Just by engaging in this simple act you are getting a message across.

I had a chance to watch part of Chasing Ice. The trailer is below! It is only 2 minutes long and is truly amazing. Please watch it!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIZTMVNBjc4

Since I didn’t end up volunteering this weekend I thought I would explore some ideas from last week’s readings from class.  I was very intrigued by the article titled, “Urban Myths,” especially when I started to read the subtitle, hinting that our idea of an “environmentally friendly” place is completely backwards.

This caught me off guard for a second; a large metropolis is not the epitome of an ecological disaster?  I thought of smog filled skies, millions of people and their tons of trash and sewage, paved everything.  Surely a modern city can’t be an example of an environmentally friendly place.  But, as I read on, I began to understand the reasoning behind this idea, that cities actually are more eco-friendly than other smaller or more sprawling human settlements because they seem to emulate living organisms.

Cities, as the article states, are like elephants; they become more economical with size.  Just as with animals, it seems, cities require less energy the bigger they get.  The explanation behind it being that people who live amongst many other people consume less and take up less space than people who live in more rural areas with wide open spaces.  However, there are limits to the amount of efficiency a city can achieve; eventually it will run out of resources.  The real challenge seems to be achieving a level of environmental resource sustainability that is balanced by the efficiency of a large metropolis.

I couldn’t help but think of the city of Richmond in relation to the ideas presented in this article.  Clearly, Richmond is not a very large city population-wise, so it hasn’t reached the level of resource efficiency that is ideal for an environmentally friendly metropolis.  But for Richmond, attaining a level of eco-friendliness won’t be done through simple population growth.  It is an old city, and likely is plagued by an aging infrastructure that surely is a hindrance to its level of environmental resource efficiency.  Richmond is obviously far off from being an environmentally friendly metropolis.

Reading this article really got me thinking about the ways in which people view cities from an environmental standpoint, and how those views are, at least based on this article, often incorrect.  Perhaps a greater number of large metropolises is the key to a more environmentally friendly society.

Today, I volunteered at the Environmental Film Festival through the Sierra Club for two hours. Over the course of the two hours, I handed out programs to people passing by, and watched a few minutes of two environmental films, Ingredients and Green Fire. The most interesting part of the experience came from chatting with other volunteers and patrons of the film festival. Whether it was the woman who worked in healthcare or the tech assistant who was the “voice of the event,” there seemed to be people from all over coming together to not only educate people on why there was a film festival, but also to learn more themselves so that they could become better advocates. Because it was such a beautiful day, we were able to stand outside and chat with those who were interested in why we were there. It turned out to be an overall positive experience that gave me the opportunity to learn about environmental issues and concerns ranging from fracking to sustainable farming.

The first film I was able to watch a few minutes of was Ingredients. This 2009 documentary observed the shortcomings of the U.S. food system against the rising local food movement. This was achieved by looking closely at how the industrialized system worked and compared the differences between that and local, organic farming. The viewers were able to learn more about local farms through a series of interviews with leading organic farmers across the nation.

The second film was called Green Fire. This film was the first full length documentary to examine one of the most famous environmentalists of the century, Aldo Leopald’s, way of thinking as well as how he approached many ecological challenges throughout the late 20^th and early 21^st century.

This Thursday I started my regular weekly service at William Byrd Community House’s (WBCH) farmlet. The WBCH is a community center, day care, after school program, and food kitchen. As part of the food kitchen they operate a half acre urban farm or “farmlet” to provide fresh food alongside non-perishable items. They have a large focus on nutrition and self sufficiency, so they also often teach cooking classes and attempt to bring fresh produce to the area through a farmer’s market that accepts food stamps. I have been interested in the urban local food movement for quite a while, and so I wanted to volunteer with WBCH to experience it for myself.

This Thursday Matthew, the farmlet manager, showed me the shed that houses all the tools, materials, and unfinished projects. He is currently working on a worm composing system that captures the nutrient rich fluids the worms produce. We then got to work transplanting two grape vines to a platform that will have a soon to be built pergola for the grapes to grow up. I had never transplanted a plant before, so I was extremely nervous about potentially killing them.

We dug two holes near the platform, encountering two challenges in the process. Being that this is an urban farm we ran into an old rusty 4 foot long pipe in the ground that was left over from an old house that once stood on the site. On the second hole the soil was near to a bank that was eroded and severely sun bleached, so the soil was extremely poor and sandy. Using extra compost for this hole we were able to create a better bed of soil for the transplanted grape plants. I felt like we were actually repairing the land; taking poor and brick/pipe strewn soil and reviving it through natural means.

Once we finally got around to planting the plants Matthew explained how you have to prune the plants by almost half in order to urge them to grow more. In addition we had to make sure to incorporate some of the poorer soil with the compost, so that we wouldn’t create a rich bubble of soil that becomes impenetrable when you reach the poorer harder soil. It would be like a clay pot within the ground.

This work was absolutely fascinating to me. The idea of repairing that plot of earth, slowly making the soil more hospitable, creating habitats for bees and other insects, composting so much organic matter. It was exhilarating to see the different scatterbrained projects Matthew has in the works. He has so many ideas for improving the small plot of earth to become a bright spot in an old neighborhood. I’m excited to be a part of them in the upcoming weeks.

As most of my fellow Earth Lodgers, I spent three hours volunteering for Sierra Club’s annual Environmental Film Festival on Saturday. The experience game me valuable insight into the local environmental advocacy community; insight that was honestly a bit disheartening.

Through working with GreenUR I have encountered the Sierra Club many times over the past year and a half. Our relationship is actually rather entangled, as almost all of GreenUR’s funding comes from the Sierra Club-run yard sale that happens at the end of the academic year.  Because of our unique position outside of SOBAC, GreenUR is able to help various initiatives and events from clubs as wide ranging as SEEDS, The Roosevelt Institute, and Stop Hunger Now. Without the yard sale (and therefore without Sierra Club), we wouldn’t be able to fund any of these projects or any of our own. Despite this seemingly-intimate relationship, the yard sale’s timing disallows almost all UofR students from volunteering (it is held the week after graduation, where very few students are left on campus). This awkwardness has always held an unspoken tension between the two groups, as both realize it’s a little problematic but largely unsolvable. This year, GreenUR decided to amend this tension by volunteering at the Sierra Club’s other annual event: The Environmental Film Festival.

On Saturday morning I was driven over to The Byrd Theatre with ex-Earth Lodgers Shannon, Shelby, and Curly. We arrived to find John and Kevin already there, and were quickly joined by Jenni (who was taxied over by Jules). I was super excited to see so many familiar faces, impressed by how many Earth Lodgers were giving up a bit of their weekend. This excitement, however, quickly faded as I looked around the theatre lobby: yes, I saw a lot of familiar faces, but I also didn’t see any new ones. Despite arriving in between two films, there was virtually no traffic through the theatre – the seats inside, almost completely empty.

Shelby approached the woman in charge to let her know we had arrived (a woman we’ve been in continual contact with over the last month), and the women excitedly introduced herself – not realizing we’d already met. After realizing who we were, she assigned us to various tasks around the theatre (tabling upstairs, handing out programs, encouraging people to submit to the raffle). After a few minutes we all realized that there simply weren’t enough people in the theatre to occupy us all, and we asked if there was something more productive we could help with. We were then given petition-filled clipboards and sent outside – We were supposed to be encouraging people to sign onto these prefilled letters to Obama, encouraging him to “toughen up his act” and to “make American a leader in regard to climate change”.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m totally all about the cause we were pushing, I just felt uncomfortable with the way it was going about. Our only training was something along the lines of, “So Obama needs to be a leader, but he won’t do so without grassroots support. Go get as many people to sign this petition. Oh, and don’t forget to encourage them to come to the huge protest next week – You know about that, right?” Basically I felt like I was entirely unqualified to explain to people why the petition was important or even ethical. I also don’t think signing a petition is particularly educational or productive – especially when there’s an educational film festival going on in an empty theatre! Shelby and I spent the next two hours trying to get people off the street to go see a movie – obviously most passerbys had plans or weren’t interested. Upon going back inside when we were done, we were praised for getting petitions signed (mostly by people who needed a way to justify not going to the festival itself). I couldn’t help but feel a little bad.

Through talking with the Sierra Club members I know the Film Festival took a LOT of work. There were many incredible films showing that covered a diverse range of relevant topics. But all this work doesn’t go anywhere if no one attends. I just felt bad seeing the boxes of paper programs, raffle cards, and petitions, all printed for no reason. Yes, we had succeeded in gathering a strong group of volunteers, but GreenUR hadn’t been involved until it was too late to make a difference. It just made me realize how little communication and collaboration we are actually doing with the environmental community outside of UofR. One of the woman in charge speculated that the poor turnout was due to VCU having an environmental film festival that same weekend. I couldn’t help but be confounded that that hadn’t been considered. I also had to wonder: why is that we were all willing to hop onto the bandwagon after it was done, but unwilling to help in the festival’s development or marketing? Why is that I was so unaware of the Sierra Club’s various campaigns and affiliate protests?

I guess all in all it was a valuable experience. It was a sort of wake-up call. At the end of the day we are all in the same community, fighting for a cause that affects all of us. So why is there such a lack of continuity? Yes, we all say “solidarity” and mean it – but we’re not actually collaborating. Hopefully this will change. Sierra Club now has their meeting in Jepson, and we realized it’s too silly for us not to attend. There will also be a large group of us going next weekend to the Keystone XL protest in DC. Between the two I think the ball will get rolling.

I went because I recognized that GreenUR (and a lot of other campus initiatives) is dependent upon the Sierra Club financially. But I left realizing that we are tied much more intimately than that. As we’ve been talking about with watersheds, we are connected through our environment and our environment’s health. The protection of this link, however, relies on us working together as One.

This week in my human geography class TLB was our guest speaker.  Our discussion that day was about perceptions of wilderness and the reading for class was actually the same reading we had for our class, the Geography of the James.  There were three ideologies regarding wilderness that were discussed in the reading.  The frontiersmen are adventure-seekers and view the wilderness as something to be explored.  The romantics see nature as sublime and should be left untouched.  The “homebodies” believe wilderness is all around us and that it is present in every backyard, so there is no point in trying to seek it out. Since I was hearing about this topic in two of my classes, it got me thinking about which ideology I have about wilderness.

In TLB’s presentation, he showed some pictures from the fall break trip. Those pictures brought me back to the state of mind I was in while hiking Mount Mitchell.  I had never hiked such a mountain and it was thrilling.  I felt like I was connected to other hikers that had come that way before, and I felt connected to the other Earth Lodgers as we climbed the mountain together.  But mentally I felt like I was the only person to hike that mountain and that I was exploring uncharted territory.  By the time we got to the top, I had become used to the same, monotonous forward motion and the environment I was in.  At the peak, looking around, I realized we were in a cloud.  On one side, I could see some of the mountain down below, with the never-ending fall colors, but on the other side I could see nothing but fog.  I realized that I had just hiked a mountain, and not just any mountain, but the tallest peak on the east coast.  At that moment I felt a sense of awe, and it was an unreal experience.

I think that I have a combination of all three ideologies.  I had a frontiersman mindset while I was hiking the mountain because I was caught up in the fact that I was on an adventure through the woods and that we had a destination we were trying to get to.  I felt like a romantic as soon as we got to the top because the experience suddenly felt so surreal.  However, I’m also in the “homebody” category.  Although that experience was amazing, I still believe that there is “wilderness” in every tree and in every blade of grass, because humans cannot create that and cannot tell a tree how to grow.