LEARN ABOUT CREATURES
(IN OUR OWN NEIGHBORHOODS)
this project is called LOCAL BIOLOGY (until we think of something better)
Today was a great day with the inauguration and the end of Bush. Obama talked about the work that needs to happen. This is really exciting and I'll take a moment here to put some ideas out about what this means for Local Biology.
When we were starting this group, and I was thinking about the meaning of LB, I searched really far into my heart to try to come out with a direction for me and my generation -- regarding the outdoors. There isn't really a good situation for making natural experiences sharable in web format in the way we are coming to expect.
On some weekend afternoons I liked to go walk around my old neighborhood looking for birds. I would carry the binoculars with me, but I never quite figured out the right way to not look/feel totally freaky using binoculars near people's houses.
I still think the secret is to pretend to be an authority. (Obviously that's a problem for me if I'm writing this post.)
Here is an article written by Winona LaDuke. She wrote it in 2001, and it describes many years of preserving wild rice growing in northern Minnesota. Here is a situation where the wild rice genome was being mapped by scientists -- and oh, but why...Winona LaDuke does a great job of explaining.
So in this article she talks about different kinds of rice that live in different lakes, and that they taste like their lake! that's so cool! makes me a little sad though. really sad that our farming people are trying to encroach on these rice paddies...and for what..uncle ben's rice?
I have a collection now of field guides, birding books and botany books. Have I read any of them? Hardly. I flip through them after giving a thorough skim, and may occasionally have a reason to look into them in more depth. Very few of my purchases have I been able to read cover to cover.
Today I have decided that I should get a tree guide. Having seen a tree field guide, I learned this was the missing piece - perhaps - to knowing which tree is which?
linepithomatic posted a photo:
localbiology, girl scouts, monarch butterfly monitoring project, minneapolis, university of minnesota,
© 2009 Local Biology, a social business
A social business is owned by the people who directly benefit, and need its existence. We all benefit from the earth, and knowing about the earth, therefore, the earth owns Local Biology and we are simply noticing her, and how she created us.
It is by being a social business today that we can reach out to all people who want to understand the world they live in - the science, the spirit, the changing planet. We can reach around walls built by schools and other educational institutions, television, media, science, religion, language and country.
We know that we love and care about our Earth and in this we unite as this 'social business,' the business being that we are all working together to bring this knowledge together on this website and to other real projects in our towns — working with our own communities and, especially, friends.
Local Biology by Local Biology is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.localbiology.org.
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