Ocean Conservancy Photo Contest!

Ocean Conservancy, one of the non-profits I advocate for online, has a photo contest going on. If you have a photo of marine life or habitats enter, it's free! Go to their website to do that or just look at some of the pics already entered; they are wonderful! Here is mine:

It was shot from the deck of the Conception, which was the small sailing vessel from the Truth Aquatics fleet that the Sierra Club of Los Angeles went on to sail through the Channel Islands National Marine Life Park. It was an unforgettable 3 day cruise where we anchored offshore and took rubber rafts or kayaks onto shore to explore the islands. We had just begun our trip early in the morning when I looked back to where we had moored for the night and saw this wonderful shot!

Since my website is being hacked during the California election process...

Since my website has been continuously hacked at all week and probably will continue that way until the election is over in California, I decided to display my new watercolors of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, the Gulf of Farallones National Marine Life Sanctuary, and the Monterey Bay National Marine Life Sanctuary here in my blog. This new artwork all came from my travels this summer to the northern California coast, camping in state parks, and the 3 day cruise through the Channel Islands put on by the Los Angeles chapter of the Sierra Club. 

If you click on any of the paintings, it will take you to my shop. Any purchases contribute to the support of various non-profits that support the wildlife of the Sanctuaries.



Please don't forget to vote if you haven't yet.



Extraordinary...Channel Islands National Marine Life Sanctuary

I just returned from a 3 day cruise through the Channel Islands National Marine Life Sanctuary off of Santa Barbara, California. The Los Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club offered cruises all summer with one more in October. It was an excellent way for me to combine a vacation with finishing my watercolor scenes for my business, Starbell Enterprises. What a wonderful group of people, including the terrific crew!!

We made way out to sea from Santa Barbara at 4 am on Thurs. I thought I would never get seasick after a couple of Atlantic Ocean day trips. Wrong! But it quickly passed by 7 am I was ready for breakfast. When I came up the winding steps from the bunks below, a sheer yellow wall of rock rose in front of my eyes. We had anchored quite close to the Island of Santa Cruz. Here I would test my stamina and endurance with a 6 mile hike over steep, rocky terrain. As we left Santa Cruz Island we could see Anacapa in the distance. All the islands were once upon a time one island, volcanic and there is an earthquake fault running along them.  We were blessed to have 2 naturalists from the Channel Island NMLS on board and leading our hikes.

Almost everyone kayaked including one long 5 mile race with the main boat. A few of us just watched, me included. However, I learned about how to start and have made plans to practice in calmer waters before attempting the Ocean. Some hardy Sierra Club members hiked and then went kayaking! It was too cold though to snorkel. Climate Change in California this summer created a cool summer due to fog banks up and down our coast keeping the ocean water temp too low for snorkeling.

The Conception, our wonderful boat slept 30 plus a fabulous crew of 6. The captain helped build the boat. He took us into a sea cave that was breathtaking!

 This is an earthquake fault on San Miguel Island that we hiked up in order to get off the beach. We saw archeological strata of the Chumash Indians garbage dump, wonderful wild flowers and the prize...the only Torres Pine forest there is anywhere!  Later we sailed around to the west side of the island to see a penapeds, beaches full of sea elephants, sea lions and seals together in the sun, no females though. We spent the last night off Santa Rosa Island.

As we returned to Santa Barbara Harbor this wonderful welcome greeted us, several seals sitting on this buoy!

A truly remarkable experience. Thank you Sierra Club Los Angeles Chapter! Thank you new friends in the Sierra Club. People from Philadelphia, PA and New Mexico as well as up and down the state of California all bonded together for this extraordinary experience!

By 2011, the Islands should be almost totally free of modern civilization and have reverted back to its native vegetation and fauna wildlife! Not far from the overdeveloped Los Angeles area, here is a most amazing preservation and obviously beloved National Wildlife Refuge...The Channel Islands National Marine Life Sanctuary.

Sign the petition to Save Our Parks in California

If you see Sierra Club of California, or Audubon Society of California, or California State Parks Foundation volunteers out with clipboards of petitions to sign, please stop and sign it. For $18.00 per car we can keep our state parks open for good. The money goes into a designated trust fund with an oversight committee to watch over it so that the fund isn't pilfered by bureaucrats and politicians and whoever else messes with our budget. Otherwise, the Governor wants offshore drilling to start and taxes from the oil companies to cover state parks. Revenues from these companies will only cover their own costs and not provide any extra funds for state parks, plus all the negatives for offshore drilling like leakage and spills and ugly.

Then of course there is the hypocrisy of breaking away from fossil fuels to help stop global warming which the Governor was supporting originally. I have many theories about this line of faulty thinking... but that is another blog entry.

Carbon footprints

This fall (2009) I attended a 6 week workshop in climate change at the Loma Prieta Chapter of the Sierra Club in Palo Alto, CA. It was highly informative and very reflective of the many changes I have made to my lifestyle over the last 40 years. The workshop was conducted by an atmospheric scientist formerly from NASA. We converted our energy usage of our daily lives into balloons of carbon emissions, adding up the total as an individual at the end of each week and then combining them with the other team members. It was like having my life scientifically mathematized if there is such a term. I was in awe of the whole experience. It was quite a focus to have before the Climate Conference (COP15) at Copenhagen. I did learn that I make about 4.2 tons of CO2 a year on the level of Italians. Europeans are under 10 tons a year but Americans are 21-29 tons a year per person!

This weekend I found this website, BrighterPlanet.org from one of my Facebook fans, Solar Oregon. On this website you can calculate your carbon footprint from your daily lifestyle. Try it!

So much going on

I haven't been able to write much since my mother fell ill in July from a uro-sepsis infection. It's been non-stop care for her until now, at last, things are slowing down and she has stabilized. The caring world around illness especially for seniors has been an education for me. I've also learned alot about Medicare, secondary providers, skilled nursing facilities, assisted living and the symptoms and presentations of several new diagnosed illnesses, one after another presenting themselves to her new doctors as she fought for her life over the last few months. A wonderful seniors social worker introduced herself and her services to me when I was treading in the deep water of living facilities and Mom is now happily living in a small facility which is a wonderful house not far from me in a terrific neighborhood. She is saying good-by to her home care nurse who helped diagnose skin cancer and get her blood sugars down and stabilize her blood pressure. She has round the clock care just in case she crashes again. Her cardiologist is finishing up blood clot searches with a carotid ultrasound this month and it should be smooth sailing into the holidays ahead.

Somewhere I read earlier last summer about the death rattle. It happens just before expiration and that is what I witnessed in my mother this last July as she nearly bled out right in front of us at the ICU. 4 times she nearly died within 24 hours. I watched as teams of code blue professionals worked intensely to save her life, a life she was giving up on. Several times I received calls from the nursing home she went into after her hospital stay or frantic looks and conversations from her concerned roommate that she was taking a turn for the worse and would go back to the hospital. My months of end of summer August and September were on edge, never knowing what the phone ringing would mean. All plans for business expansion trips went on hold. I only lived a mile away so I could get there easily, the nursing facility was right across the street from Good Samaritan Hospital.

My family has had a couple of reunions between us, step-brothers and sisters to rally around for her (and me) and to help straighten out her home and yard. It is so wonderful that we all have a great sense of humor! She has finally decided she could live here in San Jose (it was too hot before) because, Wow! what wonderful people are here! My step-brother from Palm Springs is a real estate agent and has listed her property. We only need an estate sale now and to move a few belongings here.

So my lessons have been deep in caring for an aging parent. It had been so easy up to now, with traveling for business expansion to different parts of the Sanctuaries, going to museums in San Francisco, movies and cultural events in Carmel, and getting together for the holidays. Mom is an octogenarian, her mom was a centenarian and it was just unexpected that a catastrophic illness could knock her down so far. Accepting that and coming back maybe with less strength has been the big lesson for us all.

The one thing that has helped me throughout this ordeal and deep life lesson immersion besides the amazing care-givers, concerned family members, and new found friends has been the Sierra Club and their involvement in global warming issues. The activities and new found friends have buoyed me up through some very dark experiences. This organization has kept me in touch with my business needs and goals which had to go to a low-key level while I stayed on call for my mother. My blog will be devoted to issues around what I have been doing and what the Sierra Club is doing in terms of educating our population to global warming issues. The far reaching effects in lifestyle changes in my city of San Jose, my county of Santa Clara in Silicon Valley, in California, in the US and we are hoping for the whole world are taking place right in front of me.

Like almost losing my mother, slipping away slowly or dramatically in front of me was very close to how I felt about the condition of our environment in the world. I was almost at acceptance of a desolate future, one with no hope but only of watching the destruction coming on by our wasteful energy. I was giving up as well. But through so many good people that have come together with really quite simple ideas and a bond that we can change, I have renewed hope for the future of our world. That is how my holidays are beginning to look...as we experience the world darkening for winter, a wonderful new light is shining, in the forests, out at sea, in the cities, on ranches and farms, in the deserts, and from continent to continent. We need to listen and understand and please...believe. Don't give up hope!