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Original Message -----
Sent:
Friday, June 20, 2008 12:10 PM
Subject:
Re: [SCIART] An amphibious assault
My own mother, in East Texas, carries on the tradition that my dad
started, of "washing off the house" with a high pressure hose. They
live on a lovely lake, and they, of course, accumulate bugs,
spiderwebs, etc on the exterior of the house. The yard is filled with a
loads Purple Martins (dad made condominiums for them) and hundreds
congregate in the fall before migration.They have scissor-tailed
flycatchers, Carolina wrens, eastern bluebirds (in boxes he built). The
wrens nest in a wreath she has on the front door. They busily search
through the small wood pile on the porch, too. They love the birds....
Some while after he died, I went with her to a large-warehouse-garden
department, she wanted to look for chemicals to kill the bugs when they
"washed the house". I asked her why she sprayed with bug spray, when
beneficial insects were killed, effecting the birds (those cute wrens
on the porch), and those cute tree frogs found in the watering can.
She asked the salesman for something to kill "those nasty
spiders".....The salesman said a gallon of Clordane should kill any bug
she didn't like..(this was back when it was available).
I said "NO!"... We walked away from the store empty handed. She says
she only washes with water now. But, using bug spray was what dad
always did, and I have my suspicions, now that I am hundreds of miles
away.....
It makes no sense. It's really simple. But it's hard to change people's
long standing attitudes. And sometimes the harder you try, the more it
becomes "blah, blah, blah" "there she goes again...such an
environmentalist - heavy sigh - how is heck did we raise such a
tree-hugger". Talk about discouraging, if I can't convince my own
family, it makes me feel like I'm a poor educator. But I'm not. I've
been an educator in conservation for over 25 years. I've learned that
some folks really don't want to give up their old ways, and dig their
heels in even farther. Even the most gentle mention of the subject is
like a gauntlet challenge. It's also the psychology of I'll always be
the baby. My sisters are all environmentally conscious and we and their
children spend hours enjoying the buglife of the lake - they "get it".
Whew, what a relief.....
But they live in distant towns. There are entire communities with the
same unbending attitude, and that is where the educational challenges
are.
Never stop dreaming. Never stop working towards it.
Linda
Christi Johnson wrote:
[log in to unmask]"
type="cite">It's the same with bats dying in massive amounts here on
the east coast. People tend to fear them (me not included, I'm even a
member of Bat Conservation International :-)) so they're not getting
how important it is to put in the funding to save them! If we don't
save our bat populations we could end up with a lot more undesirable
bugs - which could hurt our skin from mosquito bites... and harm our
food supplies too.
For those not in the know: http://www.batcon.org/news/news_item.asp?NewsID=361
~Christina
www.christinajohnsonart.com
On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 7:37 AM, Joan
Lee <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Good
article, thank you. Globe and Mail is a good newspaper.
Also, in the same issue is the article, "Copyright Cock-up" which is
pertinent to what we are currently trying to do in the US. (By the way,
since the headline is in a family newspaper I assume that I'm not
writing something unseemly here.) The article really is enlightening.
joan
On Jun 19, 2008, at 10:13 PM, Cathy Mills wrote:
Sure
Joan,
Hopefully this link will get you to the right place; If not, the paper
is called The Globe and Mail, the article is called " An Amphibious
Assault" by Zoe Cormier, that appeared June 14, 2008 in the Focus
section of the paper. ( It's one of Canada's National rags) I guess
the problem is that frogs aren't glamorous. At the big box
store/garden centre where I'm working (hopefully temporarily) a woman
wanted to obliterate some bees in her yard; I pointed out to her that
bee populations are dying all over, was it absolutely necessary to do
this? She actually asked me, "what was the big deal about the bees
disappearing?" While I'm no expert, I pointed out our whole food chain
is dependent on these creatures. No wonder our planet is in so much
trouble.
Cathy
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080614.wfrogs14/BNStory/Science/
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I plan to live forever - so far so good!
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_______________________
Linda M. Feltner Artist, LLC
P.O. Box 325
Hereford, AZ 85615
(520) 803-0538
www.lindafeltner.com
