Coder Dojo

I met the CoderDojo team at the Earth Day celebration in Apex, NC. According to their website:

“CoderDojoApex NC is a volunteer-led digital making and coding club with a mission to inspire children to learn, make and express with technology. We meet every Saturday from 10:30a-12:30pm ET(regular session). We welcome children from ages 7-17 years old and all levels of coding experience from beginner to advanced. Attending a session is free of charge, however signup is necessary. Register on the CoderDojo website to reserve your tickets and become a member of this community.”

Initially my wife and I got excited to learn about the CoderDojoApex group for our son to improve his computer programming skills as well as my sharing the opportunity with kids I meet as a substitute teacher at the public schools. When I heard they are currently creating projects on environmental sustainability I got even more thrilled and they asked me to judge the presentations held last Saturday! Our son is still on a baseball team so we hope he will get involved later this summer.

Group presentations of sustainability projects were judged based on factors created by the organizers for Coolness, Complexity, Presentation, Design and Usability.

Six groups of three or four children presented their projects that they had worked on for over a month. Some groups presented posters, PowerPoint slides, and many wrote Scratch programs. Topics included finding ways to improve growing food at home, sharing information to reduce fossil fuel consumption, protecting wildlife, conserving water, reducing plastic pollution, and preventing forest fires. The winning team programmed soil moisture sensors to water plants using Arduino and they came up with a great title and presentation: “SPLP Sustainable Planting for Lazy People!”

I also liked many of the Scratch games that the students created. The group from Kenya created a game to promote awareness for saving White Rhinos from illegal ivory poaching.

When I see the enthusiasm, concern, creativity, and willingness to sincerely address world problems and create positive outcomes gives me great hope for the future of humanity. For more on the #CoolestProjects Jam event and future events check them out on Facebook!

Sustainable Fishing

The Wake County (North Carolina) Public School System’s sixth grade science classes are reading World Without Fish by Mark Kurlansky. Published in 2011, the author states that on the current trend most fish we know of could be gone in 50 years! Even worse, since all life is interconnected, including on land and in oceans, loss of fish populations will affect other wildlife like birds as well as threaten the food web and human existence.

Environmental stresses such as climate change and pollution and fishing fleets using drag nets to meet consumer demand are leading causes for species depletions and extinctions. Biodiversity is the key to success for all life which would be threatened if fish species decline. For example, overfishing bluefin tuna would harm dolphins and cause other species like jellyfish to expand. Seabirds that eat fish would also die out causing problems on land. Reptiles would not have food that is discarded by sea birds.

It’s interesting to read how many scientists in the late 1800’s thought fish populations could not diminish due to abundant egg production and fisherman would never intentionally impact fish populations. They misused Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” by not considering new inventions like the steam engine and monofilament plastic nets that allowed for deeper bottom fishing. People mistakenly thought fish in the deep oceans were as abundant as along coastal waters.

Humpback whales and herring eat krill - shrimp-like creatures which eat microscopic phytoplankton. White meat fish include cod, haddock, flounder, and halibut can swim near the bottom of the ocean and swim to the surface to eat smaller fish and shell fish. These fish are prized in commercial markets. Middle ocean depth fish include sardines, anchovies, herring, mackerel, and tuna have darker flesh and contain oily fluids.

Mr. Kurlansky aptly points out the sad story of the Orange Roughy that only 50 years ago became too popular and within a decade diminished by 90% in Australia due to a lack of scientific understanding. These red fish are found at depths of 5000 feet and turn orange when they die. They can live for 150 years but do not begin reproducing until age 20 so catching juvenile fish harmed the entire population.

Fish farms may not be the answer for sustainable fishing due to related problems. Ships the size of factories net and grind up fish for feeding farmed fish. The book shares that four pounds of fish meal are needed for one pound of farmed salmon. Farmed fish confined to small overcrowded areas develop weaker muscle tissue as well as increase water pollution.

The best solutions for sustainable fishing are for consumers to buy fish labeled as “certified sustainable seafood.” Higher prices to fisherman are going for line-caught fish like white albacore tuna and we can avoid buying other fish higher on the food chain such as bluefin tuna and shark. Lower food chain fish are more abundant and sustainable including sardines, anchovies, and herring. Other suggested actions include becoming active in environmental groups and promoting international relations to change consumer demand.

Garden of Gratitude

For the past several days I have been working as a substitute teacher at Caprock Academy teaching fifth grade science and high school geometry. I am very grateful to many people — especially Mrs. Ellen Robinson who teaches biology classes including Botany. I shared with her this website so she turned me on to a wonderful book called Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer who published the first edition in 2013. I had some time between classes, study hall, and on the weekend so I immersed myself in the book discovering a treasure chest of profound wisdom.

According to her bio, the author is a “mother, scientist, decorated professor and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology and founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.”

I loved reading the opening origin story about Skywoman Falling and rereading it several times including to my family. The author wrote an article last year where she said:

“The mythic story of Skywoman Falling is the heartbeat of Braiding Sweetgrass, both an opening and a closing, enfolding the stories between. The version shared in the first edition is the most widely told account of the epic, but it is not the only one. There is always the deep diving Muskrat and the earth on Turtle’s back. The rescue by the Geese and the gifts of the animals are a constant, as are the seeds Skywoman brings, initiating the covenant of reciprocity between newcomer humans and our ancient relatives. The detail that varies from one telling to another is just how Skywoman finds herself falling from one world to the next. The common version is that she slips, the earth giving way at the edge of the hole in the sky where the great Tree of Life had fallen. It is an accident, with mythic consequences—and so it begins.”

Later in the article she describes other versions of how Skywoman descended to Earth, that this was no accident; her duty to safeguard life.

“In this time of transformation, when creation and destruction wrestle like Skywoman’s mythic grandsons, gambling with the future of the earth, what would it take for us to follow Skywoman? To jump to the new world, to co-create it? Do we jump because we look over our shoulders at the implacable suffering marching toward us and jump from fear and portent? Or perhaps we look down, drawn toward the glittering green, hear the birdsong, smell the Sweetgrass and yearn to be part of a different story. The story we long for, the story that we are beginning to remember, the story that remembers us.”

I am grateful for the wisdom the author shares which is rarely documented in oral traditions of indigenous culture especially by a person with incredible diverse credentials. The book is so rich with examples of our dependency on the natural world and that there is so much more to learn.

How pecan trees communicate across large regions yielding bumper crops one year then go several years without producing nuts and how wildlife responds to the cycle.

The importance and “genius of indigenous agriculture” for sustaining the land and healthy diets known as the Three Sisters: corn, beans, and squash.

The best way to connect with the land and nature showing our gratitude and giving gifts is to grow a garden.

To grow diverse plants, such as many varieties of corn, to fit the land rather than fitting the land to monoculture crops as is common practice with modern agriculture.

Her efforts to make a spring-fed, algae-rich pond swimmable by seeking a balance of what to put in and what to take out.

To harvest no more that half of the potential yield of natural resources to prevent overconsumption and ensure sustainability. The unharvested fruit, vegetables, fish, water (etc.) will benefit other wildlife and provide seeds or species for future growth.

Please share your comments and ideas in the comment section or send an email to info@conserve-prosper.com!

Read this Song of Hiawatha!

Working for the past couple of weeks as an eight grade educational assistant at Caprock Academy gave me the wonderful opportunity to read The Song of Hiawatha and other Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The full poem provides an amazing intimate glimpse into the natural world for a Native American man. Longfellow captures the oral history tradition of the interdependence of humans and Nature by recounting the Legend of Hiawatha.

Here is the introduction from the Maine Historical Society website:

The Song of Hiawatha

Should you ask me, whence these stories? 
Whence these legends and traditions, 
With the odors of the forest 
With the dew and damp of meadows,
With the curling smoke of wigwams,
With the rushing of great rivers,
With their frequent repetitions,
And their wild reverberations
As of thunder in the mountains?
  I should answer, I should tell you,
"From the forests and the prairies,
From the great lakes of the Northland,
From the land of the Ojibways,
From the land of the Dacotahs,
From the mountains, moors, and fen-lands
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Feeds among the reeds and rushes.
I repeat them as I heard them
From the lips of Nawadaha,
The musician, the sweet singer."
  Should you ask where Nawadaha
Found these songs so wild and wayward,
Found these legends and traditions,
I should answer, I should tell you,
"In the bird's-nests of the forest,
In the lodges of the beaver,
In the hoof-prints of the bison,
In the eyry of the eagle!
  "All the wild-fowl sang them to him,
In the moorlands and the fen-lands,
In the melancholy marshes;
Chetowaik, the plover, sang them,
Mahng, the loon, the wild-goose, Wawa,
The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
And the grouse, the Mushkodasa!"
  If still further you should ask me,
Saying, "Who was Nawadaha?
Tell us of this Nawadaha,"
I should answer your inquiries
Straightway in such words as follow.
  "In the vale of Tawasentha,
In the green and silent valley,
By the pleasant water-courses,
Dwelt the singer Nawadaha.
Round about the Indian village
Spread the meadows and the corn-fields,
And beyond them stood the forest,
Stood the groves of singing pine-trees,
Green in Summer, white in Winter,
Ever sighing, ever singing.
  "And the pleasant water-courses,
You could trace them through the valley,
By the rushing in the Spring-time,
By the alders in the Summer,
By the white fog in the Autumn,
By the black line in the Winter;
And beside them dwelt the singer,
In the vale of Tawasentha,
In the green and silent valley.
  "There he sang of Hiawatha,
Sang the Song of Hiawatha,
Sang his wondrous birth and being,
How he prayed and how be fasted,
How he lived, and toiled, and suffered,
That the tribes of men might prosper,
That he might advance his people!"
  Ye who love the haunts of Nature,
Love the sunshine of the meadow,
Love the shadow of the forest,
Love the wind among the branches,
And the rain-shower and the snow-storm,
And the rushing of great rivers
Through their palisades of pine-trees,
And the thunder in the mountains,
Whose innumerable echoes
Flap like eagles in their eyries;--
Listen to these wild traditions,
To this Song of Hiawatha!
  Ye who love a nation's legends,
Love the ballads of a people,
That like voices from afar off
Call to us to pause and listen,
Speak in tones so plain and childlike,
Scarcely can the ear distinguish
Whether they are sung or spoken;--
Listen to this Indian Legend,
To this Song of Hiawatha!
  Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple,
Who have faith in God and Nature,
Who believe that in all ages
Every human heart is human,
That in even savage bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings
For the good they comprehend not,
That the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping blindly in the darkness,
Touch God's right hand in that darkness
And are lifted up and strengthened;--
Listen to this simple story,
To this Song of Hiawatha!
  Ye, who sometimes, in your rambles
Through the green lanes of the country,
Where the tangled barberry-bushes
Hang their tufts of crimson berries
Over stone walls gray with mosses,
Pause by some neglected graveyard,
For a while to muse, and ponder
On a half-effaced inscription,
Written with little skill of song-craft,
Homely phrases, but each letter
Full of hope and yet of heart-break,
Full of all the tender pathos
Of the Here and the Hereafter;--
Stay and read this rude inscription,
Read this Song of Hiawatha! 

Learning with Others

Our attitude about learning makes all the difference for individuals to nations globally. A child may develop a strong ego thinking they know everything yet as we get older we discover there is so much more to understand about the world that is critical for our survival. Our attitude determines if we are willing to try and fail then learn from our mistakes. If we avoid trying to learn to protect our pride from getting hurt then we are not open to learning. Some experiences are harder than others like touching a hot stove or side swiping a bridge in a car which I did one time, lucky to survive, and learned to intently focus when driving. Or if we chase after what we like all the time, such as demanding sweets or our freedom, then we may try to avoid what we do not like which is good for us. How many kids really like doing homework?

In the era of Covid-19, we are seeing how essential in person learning is for a child’s healthy development. Our son had to be home for 9 of the past 12 months. Monday this week was the first day he returned to school instead of online learning after which he said was the best day of his life! I I enjoyed my day off but had to hide by hurt pride. Kids are learning how much they love school rather than staying home and sitting in front of a computer with perpetual homework.

As part of this free, non-commercial website Conserve-Prosper.com, I have provided many educational blogs about sustainability in an effort to improve our lives and our health. I wanted to learn and share our experiences and those of others more knowledgeable than me. One year ago we learned coronavirus escaped China; the first country hit was Thailand during Chinese New Year. My wife’s relatives gave us frequent updates as they developed the response that was not shared in mainstream media in the US. We started making then wearing masks sent to us from Thailand due to the rapid shortage in America. Many people did not want to wear masks in public places as individual “freedom” trumped the Golden Rule. Even now with a new US President calling for everyone to wear a mask there are many people who refuse. Refuse is another name for garbage!

Thailand now ranks fourth best response in the world to Covid-19! People wear a mask not only to protect from the virus but from air pollution which is bad throughout Asia due to factories, vehicles, and farmers burning fields. The country enforces people getting Covid testing before entering the country with strict 14-day quarantine requirements for people coming into Thailand as well as traveling to any region within the country that has an outbreak. Going into stores, you are required to get your temperature checked and provide your name and phone number to get contacted if tracing is needed.

Thailand’s economy depends on tourism that has been decimated with entire towns shut down. However, people’s health took precedence over greed based on my observations. That seems to be the ultimate lesson that everyone from individuals to countries needs to learn from the virus. We need to be humble, remove our egos, be open to new ways of learning and living, use less, conserve more, be caring, loving and gracious, and realize that no one has freedom when we are causing others to suffer.