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Food plants that grow like weeds: mustard

By Kurt Heidinger on Nov 20, 2011 in Director's Notes, ecology, food weeds, locavore, permaculture, sustainability

Welcome to our new series, just in time for the holidays! Since imagination is key to our survival (it allows us to step outside fixed ways of viewing things, and thereby prepares us to evolve beyond our present condition) let’s imagine taking Johnny Appleseed one step further. Think of the wild raspberry bush, and how [...]

“All ideas come from sensation or reflection.”

By Kurt Heidinger on Nov 13, 2011 in Director's Notes, imagination

“All ideas come from sensation or reflection.” John Locke

Walmart Heir “owns” a Transcendental Masterpiece

By Kurt Heidinger on Nov 08, 2011 in Director's Notes, beauty, citizenship, consumerism, ecology, economy, endosymbiosis, sustainability, time

The “ninth richest person in the world,” Walmart heir Alice Walton has tons of $$$ to consume conspicuously; and one of her prize possessions is the painting we are using in our Transcendentalist Club flyers to show how local heroes William Cullen Bryant and Thomas Cole were our nation’s premier tree-huggers. The AP reports: One [...]

Biocitizen Corps

By Kurt Heidinger on Nov 04, 2011 in Director's Notes, citizenship, ecology, sustainability

We are starting a youth group called the Biocitizen Corps that will meet once a month to do good deeds. Faced with severe funding cut-backs, the EPA and its agencies on the state level are unable to handle the multiple tasks that need to be performed. Our Rapid Biotic Assessment river monitoring program is one [...]

Streambed Godzilla: the giant stonefly

By Kurt Heidinger on Oct 20, 2011 in Director's Notes, beauty, citizenship, deep biotic immersion, ecology, sustainability, time

We’re finding that this summer’s floods—caused by the 2nd highest rainfall since records have been kept (h/t Gazette)—have reduced the populations of large benthic macroinvertebrates (water bugs). It came as joyous surprise, then, to find this streambed godzilla, a giant stonefly: We are supposed to kill the bugs we collect (in alcohol) so that we [...]

As you’d expect, Irene drastically altered local river ecology

By Kurt Heidinger on Oct 14, 2011 in Director's Notes, citizenship, deep biotic immersion, ecology, endosymbiosis, sustainability, time

On Weds. afternoon, we teamed with Hilltown Families to do our annual rapid biotic assessment of the Westfield River downstream of the Rt. 143 bridge in W. Chesterfield. Thank you volunteer citizen scientists! Before we began, our hosts Sienna, Jim and Persephone described how scarily high the river rose after Irene. Not only did beautiful [...]

Westfield RBA on Weds!

By Kurt Heidinger on Oct 10, 2011 in Director's Notes, beauty, citizenship, deep biotic immersion, ecology, endosymbiosis, evolution, sustainability, time

We’ll be doing a Rapid Biotic Assessment on the Westfield River with Hilltown Families on Weds. See Sienna Wildfield’s Hilltown Families blog for the details. (Thanks HF)! Today, we did the Upper North Branch of the Manhan River in Westhampton. After our 5th kick (scrambling up the bottom to dislodge toebiters), we noticed how scoured [...]

It’s Rapid Biotic Assessment time!

By Kurt Heidinger on Sep 20, 2011 in Director's Notes, Fall Courses, deep biotic immersion, ecology, evolution, sustainability

Time to get into the rivers and collect the bugs that live under rocks. They tell us—by their variety and size—how oxygenated (& healthy) our rivers are: an annual “physical,” just like at the doctors’. Here’s a map of our sampling sites:

hazelnutting

By Kurt Heidinger on Sep 05, 2011 in Director's Notes, beauty, economy, locavore, permaculture, sustainability

Harvest time brings yucky stuff like stinky rotten turnips and disgusting blight-black tomatoes; but it also delivers wonderful surprises—like hazel nuts! I ordered three tiny hazel nut (also called filbert) trees a few years ago from Fedco and this year they produced a couple of pounds of nuts. I give them them an A+, because [...]

return from the mountains

By Kurt Heidinger on Aug 19, 2011 in Director's Notes, aesthetics, beauty, deep biotic immersion, endosymbiosis

mountains ask as much of you as you can give which is why you’re weighed & measured & chewed (by yourself & the elements) as you walk them. you can walk slow and not worry about peaks or need that jagged edge in the blue to hold onto. whatever you need the mountain will return [...]

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