Preliminary Fieldwork

Last Thursday, Dr. Z. and I conducted preliminary fieldwork for my Geochemistry study of the Ouleout Creek. We drove along the whole creek and made some initial observations. Dr. Z. also taught me how to use the multiprobe and how to collect water samples. We collected five samples total and collected data from the probe at four of the sites; the water velocity was too fast at one site to keep the probe safe and take an accurate reading. At each site we also recorded our geographic coordinates and elevation.

I really enjoyed going out into the field and collecting samples even though the weather was cold and rainy. We observed that the creek contains much reddish colored suspended sediment just above the Sydney reservoir and below it down to the mouth of the creek. We sampled in three locations above the reservoir; one sample came from the Ouleout Creek and two came from its main tributaries, the East Handsome and Treadwell Creek. The water was much clearer at these three sites. I will most likely research what could be causing the difference in sediment load and what effect the sediment load could be having on the water chemistry. We won't be going into the field again until the spring.

On Monday, I filtered my samples. I stored the filter paper in petri dishes. The filtered water from each site was separated into three smaller bottles. One bottle was simply refrigerated, one was frozen to preserve the anions, and the last was acidified and stored at room temperature to preserve the cations. The two samples taken below the reservoir took a very long time to filter. Other than the long wait for those samples, I really enjoyed filtering and preserving the samples, especially since the lab work was done independently for a personal research project. I was also proud of myself for realizing the first sample that took a while to filter was taking so much longer than the first two because it had much more sediment in it.

My next steps will be to start researching the geological background of the area. I will analyze my preliminary water samples after conducting some background research and constructing some hypotheses from that research. In the spring, I will develop a more complex sampling site map and hopefully start an investigation with a focused goal.

Daily Star Newspaper Story - Fellowship

Hartwick junior earns EPA fellowship
The local Oneonta Newspaper, the Daily Star posted a shortened version of the story of my fellowship today. This is very exciting! I will have to pick up a copy of the paper today so I can cut out the story and keep it. Again, I am very excited and grateful for this opportunity to work with the EPA!

Hartwick-Hartwick Student Receives Prestigious EPA Fellowship

Hartwick-Hartwick Student Receives Prestigious EPA Fellowship

The above link will bring you to the page on the Hartwick website that contains a news piece about me. The news piece discusses the EPA GRO Fellowship I have been awarded, what it entails, and accomplishments I have so far. The Fellowship is awarded to a maximum of 40 college juniors nationwide each year, provides support for academics and research and requires the student to perform research for their junior and senior year and to complete a summer fellowship with an EPA facility.

My research will be based around the geochemistry of a small creek that is part of the Susquehanna River Shed. My advisor, Dr. Zsuzsanna Balogh-Brunstad informed me yesterday that the U.S. Geological Survey has not done any studies in this creek so my research will be all original research! I am very excited and grateful for this amazing opportunity!

It Has Been A While - Internship Reflection

Hello, everyone!

Wow, it has been a while since I have posted a blog entry. I apologize. As soon as my summer internship ended, I went camping for a week end then had about a week to pack and get ready to come back to school. I had training for my position as  a Blue Key Tour Guide, then I volunteered for Welcome Weekend and then classes started. This semester is going well so far. I am taking Environmental Geology, Ecology, and Instrumental Analysis which is a 400 level Chemistry course. I love how I can find connections and overlap between my classes, especially Ecology and Environmental Geology, I won't talk about that overlap now, but maybe I will at another time.

So I didn't end up posting as much about my internship I thought I would. The day-to-day activities were not  very interesting and I had to write a journal every day in order to receive academic credit. The journal entries were too long to post here and focused on my daily tasks which wouldn't be too interesting for you to read. I have decided to post my final reflection however so you can know more about how my internship was. I had a really great experience this summer! I always enjoy my time with Roots & Wisdom.

            This summer internship was a great opportunity for me. I was able to try my hand in many different aspects of the Roots & Wisdom program. I really enjoyed working behind the scenes and being more involved in outreach. Debbie and I both agree I did much more than I thought I would be doing this summer, but I did more in a good way. I was exposed to many things and learned much about the program, non-profits in general, and about myself.            During the first week of my internship, I wasn’t really sure what I would be doing this summer other than helping organize and host events in the garden. I was just getting the feel of the office and the internship position. I started to learn slowly from the fundraising book, Fundraising for Dummies, and by going through Chris’s old documents. It was good to be familiarized with the program again and to have the garden party event to think about right away. During the second week, I learned more about fundraising, how to plan an event, and how to work on the presentation of a gift. I also learned that my networking background from the PSGE Center Link Programs is very useful and that I can mingle well. The biggest lesson I learned that week was that I could increase my attention to detail since I spelled some names incorrectly on the envelopes I was addressing.            I was very busy in the office during the third and fourth weeks of my internship, too. I learned how to navigate online newsletter templates and improved my design/presentations skills further. I also worked on advertisements for certain events and programs. One of the greatest experiences during those weeks was to take part in the Strategic Alliance for Health Coalition meetings. I learned more about my county and more importantly about other possible career opportunities related to the topics I loved learning about through the Roots & Wisdom program as a youth worker. I also practiced my attention to detail more with the start of donor list, and I was re-familiarized with the program through the crew leader training sessions I attended.            After the first four weeks of my internship, the youth program started. At first, I was still working in the office most of the time. However, as the summer went on, I was in the garden much more often for events and the planning processes for events and programs. We had many types of visitors and performed many types of activities this summer.            Through working with the youth, I learned to have patience. I also learned that I will always love working with people. I am a social person and I love talking about what I do and what matters to me. I enjoyed welcoming guests to the garden and also going out and giving flyers to people and telling them why they should shop at a farmers market. I now know that I can work well in an office setting but would prefer a mix of office work and some sort of field work/promotional work with the public. I also feel that working in a laboratory would be the wrong setting for me, but I enjoy knowing the scientific facts that support the arguments for certain environmental causes.
            Sustainable agriculture, food justice, and personal and environmental health through agriculture have always interested me. I know I want to do work along the lines of promoting sustainable food options or supporting, creating, and/or publicizing policies that can make a positive difference in our world. This internship has helped me narrow down my passions for a career. This internship has also taught me what workplace values are important to me. I like to keep busy, I like to work on the computer, I like to design outreach materials, I like to work with social media, I enjoy working in an office, but I also really enjoy talking to people. One-on-one, in-person communication can make a huge impact on someone especially when coming from young people.            I have many great foundations for skills including communication and networking skills. I can be adaptable in my day-to-day work. I also am very organized and get things done in a timely manner. The most important thing I have learned from this internship is something I have been slowly learning at school. What you learn in the classroom is just the beginning of your education. Being able to apply the knowledge you learn is the most important aspect of learning. I believe the most important aspect of college is to learn outside the classroom. I am glad I took advantage of this internship opportunity and the link program opportunities I have participated in so far. I believe the most important part of college is discovering who you are and taking advantage of every opportunity you have to do just that. Whether you are discovering what to major in, what career path to follow, or just what type of work environment is best for you, college is where you can discover who you are.
            I have loved all of my experiences with Roots & Wisdom and I am so grateful for them. I don’t think I want to work with a program like that again. Not right away, anyway. I wouldn't mind volunteering in a community garden, but I want to expand my knowledge and expand the experiences I have. I want to try new things within the environmental field and find the specific area that fits me. After interning with Roots & Wisdom, I believe the sustainability and policy areas are what will call to me and I now know what type of work environment would be ideal. This internship was an amazing opportunity for me and I hope that I do receive the EPA award and have another positive learning experience next summer.

Greenhorn Radio Interview

To anyone who has been following my posts, sorry it has been such a long time since I have posted. I have been busy with my internship and enjoying time with friends. As I have been working, I feel posting few larger posts about my internship may be a better choice. I don;t want to bore anyone with all the little details. In the meantime, I have a radio broadcast to share.

Back in February, I was interviewed for a radio broadcast for Greenhorn Radio.

Greenhorn Radio is radio for young farmers, by young farmers. Helmed by acclaimed activist, farmer, and documentarian Severine Fleming, Greenhorn Radio is a weekly phone interview session, surveying America's cutting edge, under-forty farmers." The interview was set up through Roots & Wisdom. I described the program, my experience with it, my recycling internship and pilot study, youth in agriculture in general, and my future plans to work with the environment.

You can listen to the approximately 25 minute interview here.

An Orchard in Schenectady?

Roots & Wisdom is looking to change the face of its Vale Cemetery garden site!

Summer 2011 Special Events Crew weeding at the 

garden site in Vale Cemetery, Schenectady, New York.

The Vale Cemetery site is listed on the National Historic Register and contains lakes, wildflowers, and a wildlife habitat in addition to our Roots & Wisdom garden. Vale is a wonderful green space that runs along 15 blocks in the middle of the city of Schenectady. The public uses it for running, cycling, family picnics, and other outdoor activities.

Edy’s Fruit Bars is sponsoring the Communities Take Root site (http://www.communitiestakeroot.com/). They want to bring fresh fruit to neighborhoods across the country. Five winners have already been chosen and they will be giving out the awards to 17 lucky organizations. Roots & Wisdom is trying to procure the resources to start an orchard in Vale Cemetery, but we need your help.

  

Please go to the site above and vote for Roots & Wisdom! You must register your email address to vote, but those of us who have already voted have not received any junk mail from the site or company. You could even receive a one-dollar coupon for Edy’s Fruit Bars. Anyone can vote multiple times just not more than once a day. Please help by voting when you have some free time. As always, Roots & Wisdom really appreciates any support!

Annual Roots & Wisdom Garden Party

The green roof pavilion recently construct with much help from GE 

employees who support the Roots & Wisdom program. The pavilion 

replaced the large white tent used during the summer to keep 

the youth and guests dry and out of the sun.

            The Annual Garden Party was last night. We were celebrating the seventh growing season of the Roots & Wisdom program and the construction of the new green roof pavilion. I worked during the afternoon and evening to set up for the party. On my way to the garden I picked up the balloon order and a bag of ice from Price Chopper. Debbie and I set up the tables, drinks, and decorations together. And I display for the thank you gifts. The gifts were for the six people who played the most important roles in funding and building the new green roof pavilion, which replaced the big white tent we used for shade and to keep the rain off during the summer program.

For most of the party, I worked the sign-in/registration table. I checked people off the guest list and asked them to make nametags. I also collected any donations people wanted to make. I mingled with people as they came in. Many asked why I was working with the program and how it had impacted me. It was great to see how excited they were to hear from a program participant.

When there was no one checking in, I passed the time talking to Sarah. Sarah was a youth participant with me during 2008 and 2009, she volunteered with us last summer, and she is currently the assistant grower and will be the Children’s Garden Director during this year’s summer program. She and I are examples of how the program just keeps bringing people back because of its great impact on the youth. Sarah is one of the life-long friends I have made as a result of participating in Roots & Wisdom. We both chose our career paths based on our experiences in the garden and were talking about different career plans and job opportunities we knew about. We can be great resources for each other.

Halfway through the night, we had the speech portion of the program. Debbie welcomed everyone and thanked them for coming. She introduced Jenny who said a few words about the program and what it means to her and she discussed the importance of the college-aged leadership team. Then Jenny introduced Sarah who gave a great speech about listening to one of her ninth grade teachers talking about his perfect day. His perfect day would be spent in the garden, walking among his plants, and being able to eat an apricot off the tree. Sarah said she thought what he said was crazy when she first heard the story but, after working with Roots & Wisdom, she understood exactly what he meant and agreed with his idea of a perfect day. Then, Debbie talked about the new green roof pavilion and thanked those people who had a key role in funding and building the pavilion. While she spoke about each person, I handed out their gifts. We wrapped up the speech portion with a few quick words from Terresa Bakner, the Director of the Board of Trustees of Cornell Cooperative Extension, and Debbie gave a few closing words of thanks. Form the audience, Chris also had us recognize Debbie and all her great work.

The party was a great success. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and we raised a decent amount of money. I enjoyed greeting the guests and talking to them. I love sharing how important the program has been to me. Roots & Wisdom helped break me out of my shell, exposed me to diversity, introduced me to some amazing life-long friends, one of them is my college roommate, and influenced my career path in a way I never could have imagined. If I had not worked at Roots & Wisdom, I really do not know what I would be doing with my life. I wouldn’t possess the same passion and ambition I have to work with the environment and to share my knowledge with everyone.

The gifts I designed for the key people in making the 

green roof pavilion a possibility whether it was 

through funding, organizing, designing, or building. 

Thank you so much to everyone for supporting Roots & Wisdom!

Internship Day Four -- Veggie Theatre Rediscovered!

I love Veggie Theatre. I have mentioned it in a previous post and I will definitely mention it again this summer. Today, I worked more on organizing Chris's old files for the Event and Outreach Binder I am putting together and I focused on Veggie Theatre resources for the day. I found some old raps and skit scripts so I decided to go through all of my old videos and type up any skits, raps, poems, etc. that were missing. I printed them all out for the binder and they can now be used again or as inspiration for new ideas for this summer and years to come. I believe the only act that has been repeated is the Veggie Rap which traditionally ends the theatre program. Veggie Theatre is a great way to promote sustainability and healthy lifestyles through entertainment mediums and the youth really enjoy themselves and have an opportunity to gain more self-confidence through the performances.

Several Veggie Theatre skits can be found on the Roots & Wisdom Youtube page. The video below is the Veggie Rap as perform in 2008. I love Eliah's commentary :)

And so the Internship Begins!

I started my internship with Roots & Wisdom (see previous post about the program here) yesterday. I will be working as the Events and Outreach Coordinator for 10 weeks. On my first day, Debbie gave me a tour of the office and introduced me to some people. The Roots & Wisdom office is part of the Cornell Cooperative Extension Schenectady Office Suite in Schenectady, NY. She and I set down together and she asked me what I thought this internship would be. I said I thought it would consist of planning the annual Garden Party for supporters, Open House, brown bag luncheon, and children group visits. I also thought the job would consist of guiding the events crew in workshop design and garden tours and how to work with children’s groups. I also would look for grants and other funding opportunities, and if I have free time, I would like to work on organizing the video clips from last year that mainly consist of interviews with youth and crew leaders about the program. The video in the making would be a great way for donors, supporters, and others interested in learning more about the program to hear about the program from the people it effects the most, the youth. Debbie thought all of those ideas were great and were pretty much what she was hoping I would work on. She also may enlist my help toward the end of the summer program to plan some fall events.

After we talked, I spent my time in the office reading Fundraising for Dummies by John Mutz and Katherine Murray, copyright 2000. I scanned through the book for ideas for the Garden Party and other fundraising tips and ideas. There were many useful looking sites listed throughout the many sections of the book, and I will be browsing those sites once I am able to connect to the internet in the office.

The big thing for me to work on this week is the Garden Party, which will be next Wednesday evening. The Garden Party will be held right in the Fehr Avenue Garden. It will serve as a dedication for the new Green Roof Pavilion that was recently installed. Any donations brought in as a result of the Garden Party go towards paying the summer leadership crew, which includes the Crew Leader, Children’s Garden Leader, and the Assistant Grower.

Today, Debbie and I firmed up some details for the Garden Party. We finalized the menu and constructed a tentative supply/things to buy list. Debbie will be checking on some of the supplies to let me know how much I need to pick up during my trip to the store on Friday for supplies. After our meeting, I made photocopies of the recipes I found in the recipe books here and I printed a salsa recipe from culinate.com. As a result of our meeting, I have some more tasks to do this week.

I listened through the old interview videos I have saved from last year. I found some quotes from youth and laminating them to display at the Garden Party. Here are few of the quotes I picked out for Debbie to take a look at:

•         “Oh, sure. Anyone that wants to make a difference in the community would be very good for this program. Anyone could do this but it’s something that you really gotta put your mind to. It’s something that not everyone else can do. Like we’re not making a huge difference, but we’re making a little dent. And it’s better something than nothing.” –Josiah M. (see Josiah's wonderful interview here)
•        “My favorite thing to do is I love water fights! No, I’m just joking. Shhh. You know what I’m saying? But nah, my favorite thing to do is like harvest and seeing our progress. You know what I mean. Like, once you harvest and see how well the plant has grown… and selling it. Being able to sell to people.” – Mike B.
•          When asked if she planned on staying involved with Roots & Wisdom. “I have only been involved for six years. So, yeah, as long as I can.” – Amata C.
•          “I’m more sociable working in the garden. I first came here I was shy, but then I broke out of that very easily. So I learned to work with people better.” – Lemia
•          “It’s good to have a big, green plot of land in an urban area.” – Matt
•          “Well, that is my favorite part of working here. You get to meet really cool people and work in the garden at the same time, so you’re doing something worthwhile and you’re meeting a lot of new people and making friends.” – Claire F.

I will also be keeping my supplies in a binder, which I will turn into an events and outreach resource binder for the program. I will be going through Chris’s old documents to see what is useful for the binder and for myself this summer. I will also be investigating some websites from Fundraising for Dummies and creating a list with summaries for anyone who needs resources in the future. I even confirmed a date with for the Carver Community Center group to visit the garden, today, but I forgot to agree upon a time. I will communicate with Ms. Hill again tomorrow to figure out a good time. It sounds like the Events Crew will have a large group to work with and educate! I had a very productive day and will probably work mostly on resources tomorrow. I am really enjoying getting a feel for the behind the scenes work that goes into a community garden program like this.

Green Chemistry

I never realized how environmental unfriendly Chemistry could be until I started taking lab courses in college and when we learned about Green Chemistry in my Organic Chemistry lab classes. The 12 Principles of Green Chemistry are listed below. My source is the American Chemical Society Website.

Many chemicals used in laboratories can be very harmful to people and the environment. Green Chemistry tries to find other solvents and chemicals with similar properties to the dangerous chemicals but that are less harmful. Green Chemistry also works to use less chemicals in order to produce the same yields and focuses on the use of chemicals that can be reused many times. The principles of Green Chemistry have the main goals of reducing waste and harm through changing techniques and chemicals used.

I think improving Green Chemistry is very important. We are not going to stop producing things chemically anytime soon so focusing on improving the safety and lowering the waste produced during chemical processes is a very important goal in the scientific world if we are going to keep our planet as healthy as we can for as long as we can.

Veggie Theatre -- Roots & Wisdom

I will be working with Roots & Wisdom again this summer as the Events and Outreach Coordinator and I am starting to get excited for this opportunity. Most of my blog posts during the summer will pertain to my experiences in this position. I would like to give you a little taste of what those posts might be like. Veggie Theatre has been a part of Roots & Wisdom's open house and used for participation in Be Vocal, Eat Local Week. Veggie Theatre is comprised of skits, songs, poems, etc. performed and/or created by the youth workers and the crew leaders. Veggie Theatre is designed to be educate people about the sustainability and health of organic agriculture through entertainment. Below are two videos from last year's program.

The video above is a Harry Potter spoof about organic gardening written by Shannon Turnbull and myself. This skit had mainly crew leader involvement.

Above is video featuring Shannon, Catherine, Mike from the events crew, and Sarah, a volunteer. All four of them worked for Roots & Wisdom together in 2008. This video is a brief taste of the veggie rap. A full version can be found on the Roots & Wisdom YouTube page, along with other inspirational or informational videos.

Nature Knows Best -- Happy Earth Day!!

I apologize for the gap in posts! I have been super busy with school work and admissions events. I have enough tough week and weekend coming up, but I will do my best to post again soon.


Happy Earth Day!! I feel it is appropriate to talk about respecting and loving nature today. Below I talk about three points which emphasize why we should not try to fight or fix nature's "problems." Instead we should embrace natural solutions.

A common theme throughout my studies in college has been that nature knows best and nature will always win. As I briefly mentioned in my previous post about Silent Spring, Rachel Carson mentions that natural controls are the best way to deal with pests. If we use chemicals to control insect and weed pests, we are introducing harmful chemicals into the environment and speeding up the evolution of the pests we are killing. Over time, species build up a resistance to factors that are killing the species. When we spray chemicals we are forcing the species we kill to evolve at a more rapid pace, which could some day cause the "pests's" ability to survive to surpass the human ability to create or find a chemical that can kill the pest. It is better to use natural controls for pests like predators or natural pheromones that certain insects or plants, which are not harmful to our crops, that will hunt or repel the unwanted species.

I also learned about nature concurring man in my Popular Science Writing course last year. We learned about slumps, specifically rotational slumps. A rotational slump is a type of landslide in which masses of sediments move in a rotational manor. Below is a diagram of a rotational slump. We saw an example of a slump in Cobleskill on a field trip. Our professor told us that humans had cut into the hillside to create a roadway. The hill that was cut into now slumps annually, especially during wet weather, and workers have to clean up the road and put up materials to block the sediments from slumping into the road again. No matter how much effort is put into stopping the slump, the hillside continues to rotate and sediments fall. We also learned that man made or widened water ways, with steep sides in particular, will also eventually slump. Houses built above the waterway will eventually slump into the water. One house that will slump probably in 100 years or so is the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park, New York.

The last area of nature people control that I wish to discuss is agriculture. People control the land to produce food to survive. Of course, I have no problem with using the resources around us to survive, but we should do it in a more natural way. Organic agriculture focuses on building up soil quality. Soil is one of the most important parts of growing health crops. Conventional agriculture methods use chemicals that deplete the nutrients in the soil. When soil quality is decreased plants cannot get the nutrients they need and it cannot hold water as well. When soil dries out and there are few plants around whose roots usually hold the soil in place erosion can occur. If the soil quality is depleted enough, huge amounts of erosion can occur like during the Dust Bowl.

The moral of my ranting is nature has a way of taking care of itself. In time, nature will win against our modifications or our modifications will destroy nature enough that we cannot use resources the way we used to. It is best to use natural pest controls, farming methods that focus on the soil, and chose to develop the land where we do not have to make so many changes.

Silent Spring Review

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring sparked the environmental movement in the United States. Silent Spring is an important part of environmental history. Everyone should want to learn about the environment for the decisions we make as individuals and the policy decisions we support will affect the environment for future generations. I recommending Silent Spring for anyone interested in environmental issues, especially those who to study and improve the environment. Even though many of the facts in Carson’s book are out of date, the basic concepts she talks about are still important to understanding the environment today.

I read Silent Spring last year for my Environmental Politics and Policy class. The main points in Silent Spring are the chemicals we use kill everything, the small doses of chemicals we are exposed to each day build up over time, and chemicals are only a temporary solution that can actually make the situation worse. Below is an adaptation of the review I wrote about the book. I hope the facts discussed in the review spark your interest and maybe even inspire you to pick up the book and see what you may learn from it. Enjoy!

Carson opens the book by describing the beauty of a small town in the country eventually destroyed by a “strange blight” or “evil spell”. This town is fictional, but the situation she describes was found all across the country at the time she wrote the book. “They should not be called ‘insecticides’ but ‘biocides’”. This short quote by Carson sums up one of her most important points; pesticides kill everything, not just their intended target. Pesticides destroy protective enzymes, block the oxidation process, prevent the normal functioning of organs, and may even cause cancer. When people use pesticides, they are not only destroying the pests they are targeting they are harming themselves. The use of pesticides may also wipe out other species of pests or even species not considered pests because the chemicals poison an entire area.

Another main point in Silent Spring is chemicals are everywhere. The small doses of poison people expose themselves to every day build up in fatty tissues over time. This build up is called chronic poisoning. Toxins also build up in the food chain. Biomagnification is the buildup of toxins in the fatty tissues of organisms as a result of eating other organisms that each contain a small dose of the toxin. Carson discusses the buildup of chemicals throughout the book and about how we cannot possibly test for all of the chemicals around us. “But we do not know the identity of all the chemicals or their total quantity, and we do not presently have any dependable tests for identifying them in highly diluted state”.

The storage of chlorinated hydrocarbons begins with the smallest intake and the toxic chemicals are stored in the fatty tissues of the body. “When these reserves of fat are drawn upon the poison may then strike quickly.” Pesticide poisoning does not happen immediately. The toxins build up over time and symptoms are not observed until it is too late to prevent suffering. Unfortunately, people need tangible, obvious results in order to pay attention to an issue. As Dr. Rene Dubos said, “Men are naturally most impressed by diseases which have obvious manifestations, yet some of their worst enemies creep on them unobtrusively.”

            Chemicals are only a temporary solution to a pest problem and they tend to cause the problem to return worse than it was before the use of chemicals. Over time, insect and other pest populations become resistant to chemicals. This is a classic example survival of the fittest. A few of the insects are not affected by the pesticides and are able to reproduce and pass their resistance on to their offspring. Insects reproduce much more quickly than humans do and resistance to pesticides can develop quickly. Nature has its own controls on pests that are better than any chemical we will ever make.

“The first is that the really effective control of insects is that applied by nature, not by man. Populations are kept in check by something the ecologists call resistance of the environment, and this has been so since the first life was created. The amount of food available, conditions of the weather and climate, the presence of competing or predatory species, all are critically important. ‘The greatest single factor in preventing insects from overwhelming the rest of the world is the internecine warfare which they carry out among themselves, said the entomologist Robert Metcalf. Yet most of the chemicals now used kill all insects, our friends and enemies alike.”

(Below is the conclusion word-for-word from my paper. The opinion I express in the conclusion is the reason I am considering the career path toward working with environmental policies. I feel it is very important that policy makers understand the scientific and environmental impacts of the policies they draft, agree upon, and pass.)

Carson’s basic points about the danger of using chemicals, their overall ineffectiveness when it comes to pest resistance, the unknown consequences of using chemicals, their negative impacts on non-targeted species and humans, and the effectiveness of nature on its own are still relevant to our practices today. Policy makers should better understand the impacts of the use of these chemicals in order to make better-informed decisions. Any policy maker who is going to deal with policies that effect the environment, especially those that involve the use of chemicals, should have the basic knowledge of the effect of the chemicals that Carson discusses in Silent Spring. If people understood that the negative impacts of chemicals and the positive results of natural controls that Carson discusses are still relevant today, policy could be shaped to lessen the use of chemicals that would lessen our negative impact on the environment and save money by not spending money to continually apply chemicals where they are not effective.

Roots & Wisdom

Roots & Wisdom is where my interest in the environment started. Roots & Wisdom is a community agriculture program that focuses on youth, specifically teens. Roots & Wisdom brings together the diverse population of the county. Teen can participate in a six week job program during the summer. Not only do the teens work in the garden to grow the plants, but they participate in workshops on topics in sustainability and community building, team building exercises, work with six to eleven year old children in the children's garden program, sell produce at a road side stand, and facilitate events in the garden for visiting groups.

I was and remain the only teen worker from the rural part of the county. Working at Roots & Wisdom gave me the opportunity to be exposed to diversity and to the idea of sustainable agriculture. I formed great friendships, learned a lot, step outside of my comfort zone, learned life and work place skills, and met many amazing people. I even met my future college roommate in the garden. I was inspired to chose a career path that would lead to sustainability and/or the environment.

I enjoyed my experiences with Roots & Wisdom very much. I worked as a youth worker during 2008 and 2009. Last summer, I returned as a crew leader and led the Events Crew in daily garden tasks and in planning and running events in the garden. I taught the youth how to give tours, design and run workshops, and lead children's groups in the garden. This summer, I will return as an intern as the Events and Outreach Coordinator and will expand upon the role I had as the events crew leader. I will train everyone how to facilitate events in the garden, I will coordinate with groups who would like to visit, and I will search for founding opportunities for this nonprofit organization. I am very excited to be working on a different part of this program.

If you would like to learn more about Roots & Wisdom, follow this link to their website. I believe urban agriculture programs for youth can make a great difference in the community and in the lives of the people who participate in the program. I encourage everyone to get involved with agriculture in some way. Being outside, especially with others, can be a very enjoyable experience and gardening is a great pastime.

Welcome

Welcome to my new blog!


As stated in the description, this blog was inspired by a conversation I had with an alum at a networking reception that was part of my college' D.C. Link program, a job shadowing program with alumni in Washington, D.C. The alum I spoke to is an entrepreneur and suggested a good way for me to start reaching out to people about the environment was through social media, specifically blogging. I believe this will be a great way for me to practice talking about environmental and sustainability issue I care about and to learn how to effectively communicate the importance of sustainability and the environment to many types of people. 


Since I am a busy college study, I will not be able to post very frequently, but I hope to post once a week at minimum if possible. I plan to draw on topics I learn in class and while working, this summer I will work again with the sustainable agriculture program I worked at in the past. I will also talk about current events from time to time and possible add my own reflections to articles I read or news stories I see. Since I will be drawing on topics from classes for inspiration, some will be topics about chemistry in relation to the environment. I hope to explain those topics well enough for anyone to understand, but if you have questions about the science, please, do not hesitate to ask.


My first few posts will be about some of my own experiences working with environmental and sustainability issues such as my summer jobs with the sustainable agriculture program, an internship about recycling I did on campus, and some other aspects of my experiences with the environment and how they have set me on a path toward a career that deals with the environment.


Catherine Grace