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Citizen Science on Mt. Tam
By Jeroen Lapré
I had a great time at the Mt. Tam Plant Survey on Saturday, August 25! The event was coordinated by Alison Young, Citizen Science Educator here at the Academy, and Suzanne Whelan and Andrea Williams of the Marin Municipal Water District (MMWD). This day was part of the larger Mount Tamalpais plant survey citizen science project, a partnership between the Academy and the MMWD. According to Alison, the overall goals of the project are to document the current state of flora on Mt. Tam and to establish a benchmark for exploring climate-related shifts in distribution. The Academy is undertaking this project also as a "test case" for the new citizen science program focused on California biodiversity.
We gathered at the Throckmorton Fire Station on Mt. Tam. Alison explained to the group how our teams would work in the field, each led by a professional botanist. In our case it was Ann Howald, a consulting botanist. Our group consisted of five people—Ann led the group; Jennifer, a university student, was our photographer (a GPS-enabled camera was provided by the organizers of the event); Mike, a MMWD volunteer, was our specimen name and details recorder; specimen field presser was Zach, another university student; and I was assigned the task of collecting the specimens themselves.
We were given a map showing our designated target in lat/long, an area called Laurel Dell.
Once we arrived at our site, a 30-foot length of string was stretched out from the lat/long coordinate, marking the perimeter. The length of the string represents the margin of error of the GPS signal. We collected plant samples from within this perimeter, which we marked with blue pin flags.
Ann flagged plant samples with color-coded tags suggesting different tasks: yellow = photograph only; red = photograph and collect. Only plants that are flowering or fruiting are collected, since the reproductive parts are important in identification. All other plants are just photographed. Jennifer took a geo-referenced photograph each specimen and Mike wrote down the scientific name, verified by Ann. If the specimen was a tree, Ann instructed me to clip a small branch. If it was a small plant, I was instructed to try to dig it up with roots as intact as possible.
Ann showed us how to place our sample in our field plant press; a canvas case with stacks of cardboard and newspaper cut into 11 x 16" tabloid size sheets. If the specimen is too large for the sheet, you can try to bend the stem or root up to fit. If it's really large, you are allowed to cut the specimen in half and spread it over two sheets. For trees there is a separate brown bag for collecting items like acorns and pinecones. For mosses we used a separate white bryophyte packet.
Each specimen is assigned a field collection code, which is the last name of the botanist followed by a number. This is written on the sheet of newspaper that wraps the specimen before pressing between the sheets of cardboard, and is important to link the specimen back to the information on the data sheet
We repeated this process through the day for our area, then headed back to the fire station to transfer our samples to the official specimen press. This consists of similar sheets of cardboard, surrounded by wooden frames, strapped together tightly. The plants are often left out to dry for weeks, but for our specimens, Alison took the plant presses back to the Academy and put them in a temperature-controlled drier, which dries the plants in about five days.
After drying, the identification of the specimens is then verified by a member of the Academy's Botany department. Then labels are made and a different group of volunteers mount the specimens on the herbarium sheets to be added to our plant collection here at the Academy!
Having the plants in our herbarium collection provides a definitive occurrence record for each species found on the watershed. These records can be compared with our historic collections from Mt. Tam to understand how species distributions may have already changed, and also provides a baseline for future monitoring of change over time. The Academy can also use this information to make recommendations to land managers like the MMWD for conservation outcomes.
For both the collected and the photographed-only plants, the specimen information and geo-located photos are uploaded to Calflora. Calflora stores the data and the photos in one place, and allows for mapping of the plant species locations on the watershed so we can begin to understand distribution of species on Mt. Tam.
I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to participate in actual science! And to "get my hands dirty!" I would highly recommend it to others. This survey was the last one of four that took place in 2012, which covered 1/3 of the watershed and documented over 400 species of plants (out of the known 900 or so species on the watershed). The next opportunity will begin in March 2013, Alison says, and the field work will shift to a different area of the watershed. To learn more, visit the Academy's Citizen Science website.
Jeroen Lapré is the Senior Technical Director of the Visualization Studio at the Academy. He has worked on in-house planetarium productions since the Academy re-opened in 2008—Fragile Planet, LIFE: A Cosmic Story and Earthquake.


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CHARITY | The Girl Effect
BIOGRAPHY | Pamela Reeves is committed to unleashing the untapped potential of women and girls around the world, in every aspect of life. A former Senior Advisor in Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton's Office of Women and Girls at the Department of State, Pamela now advises companies, foundations, and non-profit organizations on public-private partnerships and on methods of developing a gender focus to achieve both business and public purpose results. Through her recent work with such dedicated groups as the Nike Foundation, the Gates Foundation and the United Nations Foundation, Pamela has seen the power that individuals, as well as large foundations and corporations, can have in advancing a stronger and more prosperous global society by supporting women and girls.
Pamela's goal is to help communities, countries and economies thrive by harnessing the power of every person. When women and girls participate equally with men, everyone prospers. She supports both the public and private sectors as they realize the benefits of inclusion—not only, as Hillary Clinton has said, because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the smart thing to do, for growth and stability.
Prior to joining the State Department, Reeves' work included advising the government of Abu Dhabi on gender reform; conducting leadership training for NGO leaders in Morocco; and initiating the IFES Women's Access and Leadership program. She also served as the Human Rights Officer for the United Nations' Mission in Liberia during that country's civil war. During her career she has consulted for foundations, non-governmental organizations and companies who seek to initiate or strengthen their equity in international development and governance, and she has worked in two dozen countries across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Pamela holds a B.A. in International Relations from Brown University, and a M.A. in International Relations from Yale University. She was a visiting graduate scholar in Political Science at the Truman Institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Pamela lives in Washington, D.C. with her family.
The Girl Effect is a platform to support girls around the world, created by the Nike Foundation, the NoVo Foundation, the United Nations Foundation and others.
Learn more about:

subset: commoncrawl


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The first day of October might have felt more like mid-December, but that didn't stop art enthusiasts and their umbrellas from amassing in Adams Morgan for the eighth-annual Crafty Bastards Arts & Crafts Fair. The day-long event was a sensory barrage of food, artistic demonstrations, live music, and 180 of the country's craftiest independent artists selling everything from multicolored faux-taxidermy mounts to miniature clay houses. As wind and rain whipped through tents lining 18th Street and the Marie Reed Center, thousands of scarf-clad shoppers shuttled in and out of booths as they searched through the stitched, painted, sculpted, printed, and carved crafts—some beautiful, some bizarre.
We asked the creative minds responsible for several of our favorite pieces to tell us about the inspiration behind their crafts.
"A little over a year ago, we opened Ginger Root Design on U Street. We do a lot of repurposed clothing design and repurposed ties, and we house a lot of local artists. When I moved here, I had no idea what DC was like at all, and I found the U Street area, and I felt at home. I like it because DC is the biggest small town you know; you always run into people you recognize, and I love that. We're really happy to be a part of the momentum that's there for people wanting local design. I originally designed the lady tie last summer because we wanted to come up with a different tie that we could wear, and sometimes, those experiments turn out awful. And then the lady tie was born, so we have this little magical beam of light shine through. We've sold over 200 in the District just because of people working them into their work wardrobe or wearing them to fashion events or art parties. So it's been kind of cool to see how people can wear them in all these different ways."
—Kristen Swenson, Ginger Root Design, U Street Corridor
"Our art is basically custom-painted suitcases with kind of a pop-art aesthetic. We take vintage luggage and usually use characters from history—like hip-hop and other historical political figures—and put them on our cases. I had a history in graffiti and street art, so that's really where our design aesthetic comes from, graffiti and stenciling and stuff like that. When we find our cases, we tape them off and cut them to make our stencils and spray paint them; then, we just take chip board and any images we like, and we'll paint them on there and try to make them eye-popping. Most of the text comes from different hip-hop songs—which I think is funny with the juxtaposition of the political figures. I'm a nerd about it; it's just one of my things."
—Jon Pemberton, Final Approach, Maryville, TN
"I've always loved books. I used to work in a used book store, and they would throw books away all the time. I just thought that throwing a book in the trash was the worst thing you could ever do, so I would save all these beautiful books that nobody else wanted, thinking someday I would do something with them. I've always made things out of recycled stuff, so I thought, 'What can I do with these old books?' I thought of a purse. I'd seen purses made out of cigar boxes or license plates, things like that, and thought, "Well, if you can make a purse out of that kind of trash, why not out of a book." The actual process is very long; I have to find fabric to match each book, so they're all one of a kind. My favorite author is JRR Tolkien, but when it comes to the purses, my favorite ones to use are old text books, grammar books, encyclopedias, and dictionaries. My best sellers are Jane Austin and Nancy Drew. People have very good taste in books in DC—it's a very literate city, so it's very perfect for me."
—Caitlin Phillips, Rebound Designs, Mount Rainier, MD
"That's the crazy antennae on Georgia Avenue, this one is on 11th Street, and that's actually behind my house. I see art everywhere, so I'm constantly thinking of new ideas and feeling super inspired all the time to the point where I wish I could work more than I could possibly ever sustain. But a lot of these are also from a cross-country road trip that I did with a friend this summer, so they're from all over. I try to capture a certain color of sky or shapes of buildings. I just think in shapes and colors, and then I extrapolate on that when I actually make the piece. So I use photos as inspiration, but the piece always becomes a thing in itself. The actual process of creating the piece is kind of complex. For example, this piece was a little more complicated than some of the other ones because the buildings are in perspective and there's certain rules of perspective that you have to follow in order for the angles of the building to look right to create a sense of space."
—Jamie Lynn Langhoff, Seeing in Fabric, Columbia Heights
"I'm selling my mixed media artwork, where I combine knitting and painting. And I'm also selling my illustrations being printed onto notebooks. The knit pieces are about how knitting connects each generation's past, and sort of about my grandmother, and other people's families, and connections to people around them. I wanted to sort of push myself to combine the knitting and the painting, and it sort of seems like, combining the two, you have to end up with something that's three-dimensional. And then my illustrations' inspiration comes from everywhere."
—Rania Hassan, goshdarnknit, Bloomingdale
"I have two distinct lines of things here: cast glass, and cast plaster, and they're both pretty different processes. My cast glass is kiln-fired glass, so I make the molds inside of a kiln and fire sheets of glass over top of that. For the cast plaster, I make rubber molds of other objects, and cast plaster into that. I like common objects—the slightly nostalgic shapes of objects. Those kinds of things tell a really cool story, so I try to use those in my work. They're things I can gather and people can actually relate to. But sometimes they're a little outdated, like the doors — they're really old doors. They're very Victorian-style era doors, but they're not specific to DC. I've been here about 15 years, and I was a painter when I came here. I started to do sculpture since being here, and I've started working in glass specifically because I met people who started a glass school here, the Washington Glass School."
—Sean Hennessey, Bloomingdale
"The designs are really referencing vintage goods—I'm a thrift store-holic. I got tired of trying to find the things I was looking for, so I started to draw them and design them. A lot of my work is based off my collections—vintage clothes, cameras, trophies—and then it's all hand-drawn, drawn into the computer, laser cut, laser etched. I liked the idea of 'neogranny,' since it's a mix of old and new technology. I've always been drawn toward 20th century design. I definitely look to the 1950s 1960s for inspiration, and a lot of the colors are pastel and really bright. The method of laser etching makes a dark burn into the wood, and the bright colors are in better contrast to that. And when people smile when they see those colors and when they see the designs, I like that. So the colors definitely respond to a happier time."
—Molly Reilly, neogranny, Charlotte, NC
"We work on wood blocks, and we trade the blocks back and forth, drawing and carving until we're both happy with the images, and then we print them up all by hand. It really depends on the size and the number of colors for how long it takes, but sometimes [it's] a really long time and sometimes a little bit faster. A really short time would be like two or three weeks. A really long time, like for the 'America the Beautiful,' [piece] is about six months. We just draw real meticulously and carve it real meticulously and then register it as best we can, also meticulously. We draw mostly just the natural world, what we see around us – also, what we'd like to see around us is something we are into drawing. We try to stay positive with it. We just love what we do, so you do what you love."
—Paul Roden, Tugboat Printshop, Pittsburgh, PA
"I make hand-stitched, one-of-a-kind plush monsters, and then I also have these baby hoodies to adult hoodies, so you can have your own little monster. I have a lot of just monster inspiration, like the Muppets and Where the Wild Things Are. I usually give them their face first, with horns; then, I decide the rest based on the face—I know that sounds really weird. It's like, 'What kind of personality does this monster have?' Then, I kind of do the horns off of that. The big ones probably take like three to four hours and the little ones like one to two. I prefer making the monsters only because they're all one of a kind, and I can kind of be creative with them."
—Diane Koss, Cutesy but not Cutesy, Westmont, NJ


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District Students Understand Their Stories Through Reading
Published on Saturday, April 27, 2013 - 11:00am
"When I want water, I turn on the tap. When it's dark, I turn on the light. While my life is so different than yours, I was still so touched by your books because they helped me to finally understand the life of someone I love: my father."
Alessandra Selassie, a fifth-grader at BASIS DC, wrote those words to author Laura Ingalls Wilder about how her stories helped her understand her father's experience in his native Eritria. This Saturday, Allessandra and eight other students will be honored at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library as winners in the 2013 Letters About Literature writing contest.
Sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress and the DC Public Library, the Letters About Literature contest asks students to write a letter to an author discussing how that author's book changed their world view.
"Programs like Letters About Literature encourage reflective writing, which is an important skill for kids to develop," said Ginnie Cooper, chief librarian for the District of Columbia. "When a writer's story becomes their story, it stays with them and makes them want to read more."
Student entries included essays about how "The Pact" inspired them to create a circle of friends to support each other and how Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture" made its reader appreciate their loved ones more.
There were 59 submissions from 15 schools in this year's contest. The essays were judged in three groups: level one for grades 4-6; level two for grades 7-8; and level three for grades 9-12.
While winning students received gift cards, Allessandra and the other students got much more. "I know you wrote these books to help children understand the lives of American pioneers," she wrote, "but for me, it helped me see my father's African childhood as being less foreign."
This Year's Winners Are:
Level 1
1st Place – Alessandra Selassie
2nd Place – Jomo Goings
3rd Place – Ryan Bradley
Level 2
1st Place – Ife Calhoun
2nd Place – Djimon Wilson
3rd Place – Lilyanna D'Amato
Level 3
1st Place – Diana Hla
2nd Place – Princess Simms
3rd Place – Andrea Flemmings
About The Center for the Book
The Center for the Book was established in 1977 as a public-private partnership to use the resources of the Library of Congress to stimulate public interest in books and reading. The DC Public Library is the District of Columbia's state center for the book. For information about its activities and national reading promotion networks, visit www.loc.gov/cfbook.


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This conversation is closed.
Does a college degree matter any more (now)?
Some say yes. some say no. What is your experience? (I'm not asking about opinions any more).Thanks you.
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wayne uejio 30+Aug 4 2013: Yes possibly even more so. Some foolish HR people only look at resumes with the right degrees from the right school with the right words to invite for an interview. Even if you have the degree from the best school, once you are working in industry or academia or public service, you have to perform. Your future is never secure and you have to grow and to change to match it.
Aug 4 2013: What you say is correct. I have found some of my best employees from the "don't even consider these people" pile of resumes. My opinion of HR people is that they have never learned to recognize the professional resume writer and will fall for mighty sounding credentials that are really meaningless. I have never, in 30 years, gotten an actual employee from the A pile after HR screened resumes.
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