PORTLAND–This morning, climate justice activists with Portland Rising Tide shut down the ArcLogistics crude oil terminal in Northwest Portland.
Portland resident Irene Majorie, 22, locked herself to a 55-gallon barrel filled with concrete that was placed on the railroad track leading into the facility. Train cars enter from a nearby yard to offload oil into 84 storage tanks, before it is piped onto oceangoing ships bound for West Coast refineries.
Majorie’s arm is locked to a piece of metal rebar embedded in the Attempts by law enforcement to move her and the barrel simultaneously would likely result in grave injury; likewise, any train traffic would threaten her life.
Irene Majorie this morning
“This is about stopping the oil trains,” said Majorie. “But beyond that, it is about an industry and an economic system that places the pursuit of profit before the lives and relationships of human beings seeking survival
and nourishment, and before the communities, ecosystems, and planet of which we are a part.”
Oil trains are coming under increasing scrutiny recently owing to their propensity to derail in fiery explosions. Portland Rising Tide, however, disputes the notion that an oil train is ever safe, since crude oil is only transported to be burned. Whatever the risk of explosion, the guaranteed result is a worsening of the climate crisis, which is already wreaking ecological havoc and claiming human lives.
US crude oil production has risen from ~5 million barrels per day in the late 2000s to ~7 million barrels per day currently. Increased extraction is North Dakota’s Bakken Shale has resulted in a dramatic rise in oil train traffic, with 250% more oil trains traveling Oregon rail lines in 2013 than in the previous year. Governor Kitzhaber has expressed “deep concern” about oil trains but thus far done nothing to stop them.
“Society should be engaged in a rapid, radical decline in fossil fuel use,” said David Bennett. “Instead, policymakers—even those who claim to understand the magnitude of the climate crisis—are forcing us to engage in an absurd conversation about creating ‘safe’ oil trains and building more fossil fuel infrastructure.”
The ArcLogistics terminal, which began operation in January, is one piece of infrastructure facilitating increased oil production. When ongoing construction is completed, the facility will have the capacity to transport 16,250 barrels of oil per day.
In April, Portland Rising Tide entered the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s offices in downtown Portland, issued termination letters to employees at their desks, and announced the formation of a new People’s Agency, which would carry out DEQ’s mandate free of corporate influence. This is the first enforcement action of the nascent agency.
“If our policymakers listened, we would demand an immediate halt to oil train traffic in Oregon and the closure of all crude oil terminals,” said Emma Gould. “Since they don’t, we’re halting oil trains ourselves.”
Activists at the ArcLogistics crude oil terminal in Northwest Portland today.
The Klamath Basin spans northern California and southern Oregon and has seen frequent water crises between the farming, ranching, tribal and environmental communities. | credit: Devan Schwartz
This is how it plays out. Those with the oldest rights make a call to the state of Oregon for the amount of water they’re legally granted. Until those amounts are met, the watermaster shuts off so-called junior water users.
“It was extremely difficult when you’re driving up and down doing your follow-up and seeing all those fields dry up and folks aren’t out working the fields,” White said.
In drought years like last year and this year, that means a lot of spigots turned off, a lot of fields going dry.
So who are the senior water users? In the Klamath Basin, it’s two main parties: a group of farmers from a federal agricultural project and the Klamath Tribes.
When project farmers make a call, water is diverted from Upper Klamath Lake to fields of onions, potatoes, mint, horseradish and grains.
Tribal water rights are a different story. Their water is kept in tributaries to the lake rather than going to ranches. That extra water is meant to improve stream health for fishing and gathering on former tribal lands.
Don Gentry, chairman of the Klamath Tribes, says the long-term goal is restoring waterways for the return of salmon. Four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River have blocked salmon passage for nearly 100 years.
Don Gentry
“I’m always aware of the fact that we don’t have salmon up here anymore,” Genry said. “A number of our tribal members, elders, people that have gone on and aren’t with us here today, talk about the importance of those fisheries and where they caught the fish at.”
2001: A Bad Year In The Klamath Basin
In the flashpoint summer of 2001, the tribes and farmers were in strong opposition. The government kept water in the river system to support fish while project farmers saw their irrigation water shut off.
The bad blood ran deep — with threats of violence and antagonistic signs lining the highway.
For a long time, the tribes and farmers say they could barely sit down at the same table. Now they’re more united than ever.
Both groups support a bill that would remove the Klamath River dams, stabilize the basin’s water supplies and do wide-scale environmental restoration.
Gentry sees great upsides for the tribes. “We really believe that what we’ve built into this is going to help us immeasurably to restore our fish,” he said.
Greg Addington represents Klamath Project farmers. He says the bill would benefit many Klamath Basin stakeholders who joined an agreement to make it happen.
The Klamath Agreements
“This agreement doesn’t make more water,” Addington said. “What it does is it gives people more certainty. So, we’d be knowing early in the season what our amount of water is so that we would avoid involuntary shortages — and that’s really the big thing.”
Addington says the Klamath Tribes made the first move in their partnership. “They were the ones also that came to the table and said, ‘Look, there’s a better way — and a way to share water.’”
Many ranchers were holdouts. They hoped to be awarded the best water rights. When the tribes and the project farmers prevailed, the incentive to stay outside the tent evaporated.
Support for the legislation now includes a majority of those ranchers. So even in a drought year with widespread water shutoffs in the Klamath Basin, there’s hope for a solution.
An Unprecedented Environmental Solution?
Experts say that solution would have historical and ecological significance. This includes Michael Hughes, who directs the environmental sciences program at Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls, Oregon.
Waterfowl at Klamath Lake. Credit: Flickr
“This has never happened in our country — and to my knowledge it hasn’t happened anywhere in the world,” Hughes said.
He argues that the Klamath Basin’s natural resource challenges are more complex than any in the nation’s history. That includes Chesapeake Bay, the Mississippi River Delta, the Colorado River, or even the Columbia River here in the Northwest.
“Each of them is overshadowed in some way or another by what’s happening in the Klamath,” he said.
No Easy Path For Solving Klamath’s Water Woes
Solving the Klamath Basin’s water woes would be a major accomplishment. And even with some momentum, it remains a difficult one.
A related bill was introduced in Congress in 2011, but it didn’t go anywhere. An updated, more economical version — still about a half billion dollars — is headed for a likely Senate vote this year. It carries support from all four of Oregon and California’s senators.
But the hurdle of a divided Congress remains a very real one. Some conservation groups say the bill doesn’t go far enough for parched wildlife refuges in the Klamath Basin. And some ranchers are still fighting in court for better water rights.
In the meantime, watermaster Scott White will keep telling water users to turn off their spigots.
White says he wishes the situation was different — whether through a political solution or even a few more rainstorms.
“If I could put something on my wish-list, the next 10 years would be extremely wet,” White said. “I can’t remember the last time I got a phone call complaining about too much water.”
Sales of fireworks have already begun at Boom City on the Tulalip Reservation. Other fireworks stands will begin sales off the reservation starting June 28. — image credit: Brandon Adam
While Arlington and Marysville encourage citizens to celebrate the Fourth of July, the cities’ police officers and firefighters want to make sure those who use fireworks do so safely and legally.
Arlington allows fireworks to be sold from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday, June 28, through Friday, July 4, whereas Marysville allows sales from noon to 11 p.m. on June 28 and from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. from Sunday, June 29, through July 4.
Marysville residents may discharge fireworks only between 9 a.m. and 11 p.m. July 4, while Arlington residents may discharge fireworks between 9 a.m. and midnight that day. Neither city allows residents to discharge fireworks any other day, outside of New Year’s, and both cities limit their legal fireworks to Class C, or “safe and sane” fireworks.
Native American reservations may sell fireworks that do not conform to those laws, but such fireworks must be detonated on reservation lands. The fireworks stands of “Boom City” on the Tulalip Tribal Reservation provide a lighting and detonation area on site for customers. Security personnel will monitor the area to ensure that children age 12 and younger have adults age 18 or older present.
Fireworks that are illegal off tribal lands include bottle rockets, skyrockets, missiles and firecrackers. M-80s and larger, as well as dynamite and any improvised, homemade or altered explosive devices, such as tennis balls, sparkler bombs or cherry bombs, are likewise illegal. Anyone who possesses or uses such illegal devices can expect to be charged with a felony.
State Fire Marshal Charles Duffy is reminding Washingtonians that the purchase of fireworks over the Internet is illegal. Fireworks must be purchased from a licensed retail fireworks stand during the legal sales period.
In its online list of tips to the public, the Arlington Fire Department noted that illegal fireworks are often unpackaged and wrapped in plain brown paper, and warned against purchasing any fireworks that are not in their original packages, or are in opened or damaged packages.
Marysville police are taking enforcement seriously. Up until two years ago, they mainly issued warnings to those caught with illegal fireworks. “Warnings weren’t effective in ending the activity,” Marysville Police Cmdr. Robb Lamoureux said. “Anyone caught with illegal fireworks will be cited, and the fireworks will be confiscated.”
Under state law, possession or discharge of illegal fireworks is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1,000, up to a year in jail and a mandatory court appearance.
City Public Information Officer Doug Buell pointed out that Marysville police can issue criminal citations to violators or civil citations, the latter similar to a speeding ticket. Lamoureux explained that such civil infractions enable officers to spend more time on the streets responding to fireworks complaints, and less time processing paperwork.
He added that Marysville police plan to have more officers on duty during this year’s Fourth of July, and emphasized that the safety of individuals and property is of utmost concern. “We have seen too many instances elsewhere and over the years where celebrations quickly turned to tragedy for families, especially where children and teenagers are involved,” Lamoureux said.
Although Arlington Fire Deputy Chief Tom Cooper believes that Arlington police and fire personnel are more likely to try and educate those using illegal fireworks, he warned that they will likely be more proactive and visible in various neighborhoods that have experienced problems with fireworks before.
“As much as the Fourth of July is a patriotic holiday, there are more than a few veterans who have a hard time dealing with fireworks because of their experiences,” Cooper said. “If people limit their fireworks activities to the Fourth, it allows those folks, as well as those who own easily spooked pets, to make arrangements.”
Officials in both cities urge Fourth of July revelers to clean up their fireworks. “After you light it up, clean it up,” Buell said. “Discarded fireworks the days after the Fourth are a neighborhood and community eyesore, and smoldering fireworks can still pose a fire hazard if you don’t get rid of them properly.”
To dispose of spent fireworks properly, the Arlington Fire Department advises that people let their used fireworks lay on the ground until they are cool, and there is no chance that any residue will reignite, after which they should place all the expended firework cases in a bucket of water. Those who use fireworks should keep a bucket of water or a running water hose close by.
“We want people in our community to enjoy fireworks and the Fourth, but we want them to do so safely, which is why we’re encouraging them to attend public fireworks shows, like the one at the Arlington Boys & Girls Club,” Cooper said. “Those shows are professional, well-organized, safe and, at least in Arlington, free.”
Cooper cautioned against treating certain fireworks dismissively because of their size. “People tend to think that smaller fireworks are less dangerous,” Cooper said. “That’s how they get injured, from standing too close to those fireworks, or over them, or even by holding bottle rockets with their bare hands.”
A felony arrest warrant has been issued for Kevin Scott Miller, a 45 year-old transient Level III sex offender who recently has been seen in Arlington and Marysville.
Miller is wanted for failure to register as a sex offender with Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office detectives. He is 6-foot tall, weighs 175 pounds, and has brown hair and blue eyes. Anyone with information about Miller’s whereabouts is asked to call 911.
In 1995, Miller was accused of picking up a 14-year-old girl and attempting to strangle her with a rope and sexually assaulting her. In a second incident that year, he befriended an adult woman he met in a nightclub, took her into a secluded area, attempted to strangle her with a rope, and physically assaulted the woman.
Rescue dogs fashion show, wiener dog races, Flyball, contests and more!
MARYSVILLE – Marysville Dog Owners Group (M-DOG) invites you and your pooch to the 8th Annual Marysville Poochapalooza outdoor dog event 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, July 12 at Strawberry Fields Park, 6100 152nd St. NE in Marysville.
Snohomish County’s largest dog event has kept tails wagging with the Fashions and Rescues Runway Show, Running of the Wieners dachshund races, Flyball exhibitions, pie-eating and Best in Show contests to give dogs their moment to shine, event coordinators say. In addition, you can snoop for bargains among the dozens of pet-related vendors.
Poochapalooza is free, but a suggested minimum $5 donation per person is requested, with goodie-filled “wag bags” to the first 500 visitors. All proceeds support needs at Strawberry Fields for Rover Off-Leash Park, such as agility equipment, picnic tables and benches. The park is maintained year-round by M-DOG volunteers.
Poochapalooza this year will again go high fashion with the popular Fashions and Rescues Runway Show, mixing country charm with urban chic. The show will feature adoptable dogs modeling the latest eye-catching fashions live on the catwalk…urr….dogwalk.
“This is one our favorite highlights at the event because we like helping pet adoption groups find loving homes for dogs,” says Leslie Buell, Poochapalooza founder and coordinator, and an owner of shelter adopted dogs for years.
Another favorite is the “Running of the Wieners” dachshund races. Watch as these low to the ground but high on energy pups show off their speed and cunning in races starting at 2 p.m., Buell says. The number of qualifier races will depend on how many dogs register, so make sure your dog is in the running! Day of event registration is $10 per dog to race. Top finishers will be invited to compete in wiener dog races at the halftime show of a Seattle Seahawks game at Century Link Field in the 2014 season.
Dogs with a hidden talent can enter fun “Best in Show” contests like Best Kisser, Best Voice, Wackiest Pet Trick, and Pooch Pie-Eating Contests. Contest donation cost is $5 for one contest, or $10 for unlimited contests (excluding the Pooch Pie-Eating Contest in big and small dog categories, which is $10.) Register at the event. Visit the Poochapalooza website at http://poochapalooza.org/ for forms and schedule. The pie-eating contests are sponsored and emceed by Dining Dog Café and Bakery of Edmonds and Owner Dorothy Moore. The fashion show is sponsored by Christy Bows LLC.
Among new events this year, DuTERRA Essential Oils and K9 Nosework will combine to provide a scent demonstration, at 1:30 p.m., and a Doggie Dessert Dash will occur at 3 p.m., courtesy of Pupcakes LLC.
Food and refreshments available for purchase. Parking is free.
Jeff Hellmer is an accomplished jazz pianist who has taught music at the University of Texas at Austin for 27 years. He thinks of himself as more than a teacher, though: “What I would like to do with my teaching is be an ambassador for jazz.”
This past spring, in what’s become an increasingly common move, he brought his ambassadorship to a wider audience. He turned his popular introductory course, Jazz Appreciation, into a free 10-week online course.
It’s open to anyone on through a company called edX, and 19,000 people signed up.
Online college is no longer the future. It’s here. According to the Sloan Consortium, more than one-third of all U.S. college students now take at least one course online for credit. That’s 7 million students last year alone. Meanwhile, on platforms like edX (over 2 million users) and Coursera (over 8 million users), people from every country in the world are taking free versions of college courses.
The news from Starbucks, amid this dramatic expansion of online learning, has reignited a long-running debate about the quality of what’s being offered.
In other words, can 19,000 students, watching a video of Jeff Hellmer on their computer screens, ever hope to learn as much – or learn as well – as the students who’ve sat in a classroom right in front of him for all those years?
To answer that, we need to define and measure “quality” in online education. Which is tricky, because we don’t have a great definition of quality in face-to-face education.
Fortunes—not to mention the education that millions of students will receive —ride in the balance.
The Problem
There’s reason to be cautious.
A meta-analysis by the U.S. Department of Education in 2010 showed that students performed modestly better in courses with some online component.
However, a more recent study from Columbia University, focusing specifically on community college students, shows that college students are more likely to withdraw from online courses, that they score lower in these courses when they do finish, and that those who begin college with online courses are less likely to persist and complete their degrees.
The study also found that online courses tend to widen the achievement gap: African-Americans, and those with lower previous grades, do worse in an online environment.
The Columbia researchers, as well as other critics, argue that the reason students so often fail in these classes is because of the way the instruction is designed.
Most online courses, including Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, consist of video snippets of lectures, readings, and multiple-choice quizzes. There’s usually some kind of online forum or discussion page for students to talk over the concepts presented in the course.
Basically, it’s copying the traditional classroom lecture format into the online realm.
The main strength of this approach as that it can be done almost free. That’s exactly what gets people so excited about online education in general, and MOOCs in particular.
Anant Agarwal, the founder of edX, likewise, told me in a recent interview that giving millions around the world of people access to higher education is a key goal of the initiative, which is backed by MIT and Harvard. He makes a comparison to basic infrastructure. “We are building free broad gauge railroad around the world,” he says. “You can think of the content as the carriages.”
The metaphor—comparing the distribution of knowledge with the distribution of, say, coal or sugar—is one that troubles many critics of educational technology.
“Is education content delivery? Is it the same as putting resources online?” asks Audrey Watters, an author and blogger. “We’re starting to frame teaching and learning in terms of language we use to talk about the web and media: ‘content delivery platforms’ and ‘learning management systems.’ “
Instead of the oft-maligned “factory model” of education, she says, what you end up with instead is a “cubicle model”—one person with a laptop, shoveling in information.
Adaptive Learning
There are attempts to use new technology to make online learning more interactive. Some of these efforts show promise – especially in the area of reaching remedial students.
At the University of Texas, Jeff Hellmer partnered with a company called Cerego to translate some of the material he covers in the jazz course into a set of what are often called “adaptive learning” items.
Andrew Smith Lewis, cofounder of Cerego, calls his company’s technology “flashcards on steroids.”
Hellmer created 180 items covering historical facts, technical elements of jazz music, and music clips where the student would have to listen and name the title, artist, and era.
For example, a picture of Art Blakely requires a student to identify the ‘Hard Bop,” era. Or they listen to a snippet of ‘Kind of Blue’ and must answer ‘Miles Davis.’ As you go through the set, the system is predicting how well you know each item, based on how many times you’ve seen it, how recently you’ve seen it, and how often you’ve seen it.
(Here is the full set if you want to test yourself).
Cerego uses an artificial intelligence algorithm, based in part on the science of memory, to decide which item to show you next, and when to show you the same item again. The goal is that you memorize them in an optimal amount of time. The program is also designed to get students to retain the information longer than with traditional methods. You have to identify each item correctly multiple times instead of just cramming to get it right one day on one quiz.
A central feature of adaptive learning is that it varies the presentation of content according to the user’s responses.
The secret sauce of this system? It’s kind of fun, like a video game.
“The mechanics of a successful game are designed to keep you in this band between boredom and frustration,” says Cerego’s Smith Lewis. “We see a nice uptick in engagement and completion.”
The thinking is that students are more likely to stick with Cerego-enhanced courses because it was a thrill to challenge themselves with the flashcard tool.
Millions of students from kindergarten through college are currently using adaptive learning software, both in online-only and blended settings.
Among the most popular are Pearson’s MyMathLab, with 10 million college students, Scholastic’s Math 180, Dreambox Learning, and Khan Academy. Math is the most common subject being taught this way, but the programs can cover any topic with a set of facts to be absorbed.
A leader in these efforts is Arizona State University, which has gone farther than any other large university to bake these concepts into online courses from the get-go.
The university has partnered with Pearson and a company called Knewton since 2011 on dozens of courses. ASU officials say they’ve had especially positive results with their developmental math courses—the exact same type of course that the Columbia University researchers found online students were doing worse in.
Bean-counting
”Quality” in online education is about more than enhancing content delivery or adding multimedia bells and whistles.
The technology makes it possible to measure student outcomes in unprecedented detail. This is affecting the way we think about quality in all of education.
There’s a wealth of data available, for example, from Jeff Hellmer’s Jazz Appreciation course.
Students on average memorized the basic facts in just 11 hours, using Cerego. And of the more than 20,000 who signed up initially, 2,370 actually passed. That’s a 12 percent pass rate—compared to the 5 percent typical for most MOOCs.
Two-thirds of those who finished did so with a grade over 90 percent. Three-fourths of students agreed that using Cerego’s adaptive learning tools helped them learn the material faster, which the company’s research shows is true in other subjects.
But most students attend public universities and community colleges that accept the vast majority of the students who apply. Therefore selectivity doesn’t apply broadly as a measure of quality. And so, colleges in this sector, with the enthusiastic support of the federal government, are developing new, data-driven measures of quality based on student outcomes, like transfer, graduation, and employment rates.
Arizona State University is a case in point. It’s a giant public institution with over 75,000 students, that accepts 90 percent of those who apply.
In recent years the university has become preoccupied with improving outcomes. Their six-year graduation rate is now at 58.7 percent, compared to a national average of 59 percent (but just 31 percent for open-admission schools like ASU). This is trending up: the number of degrees awarded has increased 60 percent since 2002.
In part, ASU is relying on technology, like an online advising system called eAdvisor, to improve student success. The system helps students navigate the university’s 290 majors and map out the courses they need to reach their goals. ASU Online launched in 2006. President Michael Crow’s vision is to grow online enrollment to 100,000 students. The recent deal with Starbucks is part of that effort.
On some key measures ASU’s current 10,000 online-only students seem to be doing worse than on-campus students: the 3-year graduation rate is just 36 percent (most online students come into the program with some college credits already, which is why they report three-year rates). This jibes with what we see in many online programs.
The Blend
In this drive to define – and achieve – “quality” in online education, as in traditional education, research points to one essential element: interaction with instructors.
It doesn’t have to be face to face. Video chats, phone calls, email and even text messages can all help students stay engaged and motivated. Group work and peer discussions are important too.
But instructor time remains the most expensive resource, and it’s often scarce and rationed, especially in the online realm.
Smith Lewis, along with other ed-tech people I talked to, framed the next generation of computer enhanced learning as a way to free up professors to do what they do best—not to replace them.
Professor Hellmer, for one, was so taken with the Cerego platform that he decided to incorporate it into his live, in-person classes, starting this summer. He sees it as a labor-saving device: the machine will handle the shoveling in of facts, while he does the cultivating of the students’ mental gardens.
“The part I’m looking forward to is spending more time discussing more complicated issues or higher-level thinking,” he said. “I’m hoping that Cerego is going to take care of that foundational learning more efficiently.”
He says the Cerego content will make up “about half” of the grade in the class. Instead of taking quizzes where they might just be guessing the right answer, students will have to study until they get a certain percentage of items into the “green zone” on the Cerego system, meaning the computer is convinced they have seen, repeated, and squirreled these facts away in their brains for the long haul. And not for nothing, those are quizzes that Hellmer and his assistants no longer have to grade.
Anant Agarwal, the founder of the MOOC platform edX, sees many professors making this transition, taking something they’ve developed online back into the traditional classroom setting. Universities are repurposing their own MOOCs on campuses in a variety of ways, as well as adapting the resources produced by others.
In the end, the vision of “quality” in higher education will probably take in a little bit that’s old, and a little bit that’s new.
Quipus where used as a form of record-keeping in Inca society, which had no written language.
A set of twenty-five well-preserved quipus were found in the archaeological complex of Incahuasi, south of Lima, Alejandro Chu, archaeologist in charge of the site reported on Tuesday.
Chu told Andina News Agency that this is a major finding as the quipus were found in warehouses or kallancas and not in a funerary context, as most discoveries in the past, “what makes us believe they were used for administrative purposes”.
According to the Peruvian archaeologist, these objects, used by the Inca empire and previous societies in the Andean region, have different sizes the longest measures 3 meters and they have multiple knotted strings of different colors.
Incahuasi or Inca house, located 29.5 kilometers south to the Cañete-Lunahuana highway- is the most important and strategic city built by the Incas in the valley of Lunahuana.
Quipus
With no written language, the Inca devised a tool for recording the movement of people and goods. A quipu is essentially a group of wool and cotton strings tied together.
The strings are dyed in many different colors, and they are joined together in many different manners and they have a wide variety and number of knots tied in them. Together the type of wool, the colors, the knots and the joins hold information that was once readable by several South American societies.
Many of these quipus were destroyed by the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century, but approximately 200 of them dating no earlier than about 650 AD have been found.
Although archaeologists do not all agree about the function of the knotted strings, one fairly compelling argument is that the quipu was a method of record keeping.
Juried art show in Santa Fe’s Railyard Arts District will feature more than 400 acclaimed Native American artists. Three-day event includes live performances, traditional music and dance, youth art, skateboarding exhibition, literary booths and more
Source: JLH Media
June 26, 2014; Santa Fe, NM: More than 400 acclaimed Native American artists will show and sell their art at the first annual Indigenous Fine Art Market (IFAM) at the Santa Fe Railyard on August 21-23, with more award-winning talents juried in every day. Participating artists include jeweler Darryl Dean Begay (Navajo), clothing designer Sho Sho Esquiro (Kasa Dene), jeweler Tchin (Narragansett/Blackfeet), Apache Skateboards founder Douglas Miles (San Carlos Apache), photographer Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), writer Sara Marie Ortiz (Acoma Pueblo), jeweler Kristen B. Dorsey (Chickasaw), bead worker Summer Peters (Saginaw Ojibwe), jeweler Victor P. Beck, Sr. (Navajo), painter Rhett Lynch (Navajo) and weaver Melissa Cody (Navajo).
“IFAM is about our narrative and our art, it is not about old versus new or traditional versus contemporary,” said John Torres Nez, President of the Indigenous Fine Art Market. “It is designed for all communities, from tribal lands throughout North America to our local Santa Fe area and collectors from all over the globe. We want to share our culture with everyone, not just those who can afford an award-winning $20,000 necklace. Along with spectacular jewelry, paintings, beadwork, and pottery, IFAM includes music, dance and literary performances and native foods for everyone to enjoy.”
Guided by artists who want a voice in how their market is produced, IFAM was formed to share the Native American narrative with the world through relationships made with those who experience Native art. A juried art show, IFAM will maintain the highest quality of standards expected with a fine art show.
IFAM’s events were chosen to create a greater understanding of the diversity and beauty of Native American culture and people as they evolve and exist today. IFAM features performances by Native bands, traditional music and dance, spoken word, skateboarding exhibitions, installation art, mural painting, youth art, and literary booths.
IFAM Art Show & Celebration: Thurs., Aug. 21 – Sat., Aug. 23 Santa Fe Railyard
IFAM Stage, Thurs., Aug. 21 – Sat., Aug. 23, Santa Fe Railyard
Youth programming, Wed., Aug 20 – Sat.,Aug. 23, Warehouse 21
Film programs
IFAM is currently looking for major sponsorships of all kinds for the stages, programming, facilities, and events. To discuss sponsorships, contact Linda Off at linda@indigefam.org.
IFAM’s list of participating artists is updated daily at www.indigefam.org.
Alaska’s humpback whales came a step closer to moving off the endangered species list this week when an arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a positive initial finding on the merits of the state’s petition to delist a population of the marine mammals.
On Wednesday, NOAA Fisheries announced a positive finding, which means the agency “has determined that the petition presents substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that the petitioned action may be warranted,” said a release on the finding.
The State of Alaska petitioned the agency in February to delist the central north Pacific population of humpbacks, which travels between Hawaii and Alaska. An estimate at that time put the entire north Pacific population at 21,800, up from about 1,000 in 1966, the year commercial whaling ended. The central north Pacific stock — the population segment targeted by the state’s petition — is believed to number at least 5,833, NOAA said Wednesday.
Another organization, the Hawai’i Fishermen’s Alliance for Conservation and Tradition, is also seeking delisting, but for the entire north Pacific population. NOAA issued a positive 90-day finding on that petition last August.
The positive findings on the Alaska and Hawaii group’s petitions mean NOAA will conduct status reviews of the central north Pacific and entire north Pacific populations. Those reviews generally take a year.
NOAA is already engaged in a status review of the global population of humpback whales, a project started in 2009 and not prompted by any petition, said Julie Speegle, a spokeswoman for the agency.
NOAA plans to combine the new north Pacific population reviews into the global study, Speegle said. “Within that status review, we will look at the different stocks,” she said.
Humpback whales exist in oceans all over the world, Speegle said. Within the north Pacific population, she said, there are three stocks — the central stock that is the subject of the Alaska petition, the western stock in Asia and the stock that swims off California, Oregon, Washington and Mexico.
If any delisting occurs, that could affect regulations that protect the whales, Speegle said.
“We would go back to the regulations to determine what may be necessary or what needs to be changed,” she said. But regulation changes depend on the outcome of the status review, a range of possibilities that includes a possible change to a listing of “threatened” from the current endangered listing, she said.
Neonicotinoid pesticides are great at killing insect pests, which helps to explain the dramatic rise in their use during the past 20 years. They’re popular because they are systemic pesticides — they don’t just get sprayed onto plant surfaces. They can be applied to seeds, roots, and soil, becoming incorporated into a growing plant, turning it into poison for any bugs that might munch upon it.
But using neonics to control pests is like using a hand grenade to thwart a bank robbery.
The pesticides don’t just affect pest species. Most prominently, they affect bees and butterflies, which are poisoned when they gather pollen and nectar. But neonics’ negative impacts go far beyond pollinators. They kill all manner of animals and affect all kinds of ecosystems. They’re giving rise to Silent Spring 2.0.
“It’s just a matter of time before somebody can point to major species declines that can be linked to these compounds,” said Pierre Mineau, a Canadian pesticide ecotoxicologist. “Bees have been the focus for the last three or four years, but it’s a lot broader than that.”
Mineua contributed to an epic assessment of the ecological impacts of neonics, known as the Worldwide Integrated Assessment, in which 29 scientists jointly examined more than 800 peer-reviewed papers spanning five years. Their findings are being published in installments in the journal Environmental Science and Pollution Research, beginning last week with a paper coauthored by Mineua that details impacts on vertebrate animals, including fish and lizards. Here’s a summary of highlights:
Overview
Neonics can remain in the soil for months — sometimes for years. As they break down, they form some compounds that are even more toxic than the original pesticide. Because of these long-lasting ecological impacts, traditional measures of pesticide toxicity fall short of describing the widespread damages caused by neonics. In some cases, neonics can be 10,000 times more toxic to bees than DDT.
Ecosystem impacts
Noenics don’t stay where they are sprayed or applied. They can be found in soils, sedimentation, waterways, groundwater, and plants far away from farms and manicured gardens. They can interfere with a wide range of ecosystem functions, including nutrient cycling, food production, biological pest control, and pollination services. Of course, the animals that are worst affected are those that visit farmlands — and water-dwelling species that live downstream from farms.
Land-dwelling bugs
Everything from ants to earthworms can be affected, absorbing the poisons into their tiny bodies from dust in the air, through tainted water, and directly from plants.
Pollinators
Pollinators, including bees, butterflies, birds, and bats, are “highly vulnerable” to the pesticides. Not only do they drink poisoned nectar and eat poisoned pollen, but they can also be exposed to the pesticides through water and the air. This jeopardizes the ability of plants to reproduce, and the impacts can reverberate through ecosystems.
Aquatic invertebrates
Crabs, snails, and water fleas are among the water-dwelling species that can be exposed to the pesticides through the water in which they live. High concentrations of the pesticides found in waterways have reduced population sizes and diversity. The insecticides can affect the animals’ feeding behavior, growth rates, and movement.
Birds and other animals
Birds eat crop seeds treated with pesticides. Reptile numbers have dropped because the pesticides kill off their insect prey. And fish downstream from farms literally swim in the poison.
Knowledge gaps
Still, despite their prevalence, there’s a scary amount that we don’t know about these insecticides. The toxicity of neonics to most species has never been measured. For example, just four of the 25,000 known species of bees have been subjected to toxicity tests involving the pesticides.
And that’s not all
That’s just the ecosystem impacts of the poisons — the review doesn’t even deal with the effects of these insecticides on farmers or on those who eat farmed goods.
By YERETH ROSEN 
