Owsley & him
Poster by Owsley for a 1966 Grateful Dead concert in LA's Harmonica Store. Source: Owsley's website. Click on the poster to be taken to thebear.org
Back in the day, journalist Charlie Perry lived in a rooming house in Berkeley. That is where his 1982 Rolling Stone story Owsley & Me* opens with the arrival of a new tenant: “… we were fortunate to live in a house where everybody turned on,” he wrote. “Just how fortunate, we realized in January, 1964, when somebody moved out and all sorts of pensioners and bag ladies started answering the room for rent sign. Suddenly it looked as if our mellow scene was doomed, so when this guy in his late twenties checked out the room and started talking drugs within three minutes, we begged him to move in. Forty-five minutes later, when he hadn’t stopped talking about drugs, we weren’t so sure …
A message from Jonathan Parfrey
Images: NASA Earth Observatory. Click on the images to be taken to a series of satellite photos of the tsunami and resulting fires.
Green LA Coalition Steering Committee Member Jonathan Parfrey just posted a memorandum to the environmental community about the nuclear disaster in Japan. “Last Friday’s earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan was a tragic reminder of the earth’s destructive power,” he wrote. “The death toll is expected to be in the tens of thousands. What is occurring, however, at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is no natural disaster, but a human-made one …” To keep reading Parfrey’s memorandum, click here. In addition to being on the Steering Committee of the Green LA Coalition, Parfrey is a commissioner of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. He has also served with the League of Conservation Voters, as director of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles and on …
Rain barrels
“Thanks to relentless marketing, rain barrels are enjoying a potent dose of moral buzz that is fast turning them into a 21st century version of the Great Tulip Mania,” writes Owen Dell.
To see what else the author of “Sustainable Landscaping for Dummies” has to say about saving our water supply 55 gallons at a time, click here.…
The Dry Garden: Boxy
Natalie Saavedra (3rd grader) at San Jose-Edison Academy School Garden in Covina, CA. Photo: Emily Green
Most people, save Atlantic magazine’s resident contrarian Caitlin Flanagan, agree that school gardens are a good thing. They encourage experimentation, critical thinking and healthful eating. Done right, they raise parental participation in schools. At their best, they’re as cute as a third-grader grubbing for worms.
Too often, however, teachers are defeated from the outset by the burden of installing and then maintaining a garden in addition to a classroom.
Click here to keep reading about a workable new model for schools in “The Dry Garden” in the Los Angeles Times.…
Japan quake, fifth strongest in world since 1900, leads to a Pacific-wide tsunami
Click here for estimated arrival times on the North American coast of a Pacific-wide tsunami generated by an 8.9* magnitude earthquake near the east coast of Honshu, Japan. Click here for warnings and advisories for the US Pacific Coast. The highest surges are predicted for north of Point Concepcion. However, in Southern California, stay away from the ocean. Most importantly, click here for the Red Cross as it readies to send aid to Japan, and here, if you can bear it, to be taken to a photo essay in the Los Angeles Times revealing the scale of the Japanese catastrophe the morning after what now ranks as the fifth strongest* quake recorded since 1900.
*Updated post. 3/14/2011: The US Geological Survey joined its Japanese opposite number in recalibrating the quake as having been magnitude 9.0. Click here for the announcement. The recalibration makes it a tie for the …
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