LEARN ABOUT CREATURES
(IN OUR OWN NEIGHBORHOODS)
this project is called LOCAL BIOLOGY (until we think of something better)
Chacha Sikes
For the last few years, I have tried and tried to find out how those birders know all of those birds. When I met my friend Jeanne-Marie, she took me on bird walks. At the same time, I was working on a project about Listening - the listening really helped me find the birds. This made it obvious that somehow, even though I had a decent education and nice parents - somehow I never really got training in using my senses. Sad, but true.
Now I've been a bird nerd for a 1.5 years. I find that sometimes people ask me which bird is which. Now that's just crazy! Especially considering that it took at least 7 years to just get myself started.
Sharing our knowledge about the outside world is something that works best face to face, and especially outdoors. And what would be more great than giving ourselves all a chance to tell stories about the land that we live on.
Why nature? I love the natural world because I want to meet the animals, know what the plants are up to. It's so beautiful, and always it has seemed like it would be really great to know more about it. That's probably not the most amazing reason, but that's ok.
Coming from the United States and growing up watching PBS, I have always seen so many nature programs, which I've always really liked. But actually, those shows only make me feel worse and worse about how hard it is to find nature. First, PBS makes nature seems better in other places. Well, that's not really the fault of public television, but rather our culture and style of learning, which tends to reward people with heaps of status for leaving their home to go off and find new species in far away places.
It feels like you have to have a degree in biology, or you have to eat granola and put up with people who spend way too much money at REI if you want to appreciate the great outdoors. That's dumb.
If you do not have people who are good teachers - it seems like you wind up meandering or giving up. You might build up a collection of field guides, and still have no idea what the point of the field guide is.
It is my belief that a lot of this has to do with the history of western civilization, the impact of the scientific revolution, the domination of Christianity, the pioneering attitudes of my great great great grandparents whose names I do not know.
Sometimes it just feels like my interest in things green and beautiful has everything to do with feeling like I'm stuck inside all the time. I have been living surrounded by concrete (though now I live in Minneapolis and there are lots of parks here.)
I'm not a country girl. You might notice that the more urban a place is, the more you need to get out in the sunshine where it is peaceful. And if you aren't rich - well, forget it. You have no land, no space to grow plants, which means the only birds you get to see are pigeons and seagulls. And pigeons eat trash! While it's possible to get excited about pigeons, or practice photography on pigeons (more) - really, come on. Pigeons are a sad, sad offer to those of us who feel vulnerable when we leave our houses.
In my heart, I want the names and stories put back on the trees. It would be really great to know what it's like to live in a season and have interest in what blooms when.
The other major part of my interest here is that it seems so important to stop thinking of nature as something that's more interesting somewhere else. Why would certain libraries of animal knowledge have something from all over the world, and nothing from nearby? Why do we need to ship westerners out to far away countries to learn about nature? The effect is that we idolize tigers and lions in Africa, but don't put that same energy into protecting our local mountain lions, lynxes, wolves. Now, that's a major bundle of issues and I have strong and messy opinions about this. (And I'm not really saying much here about how we have a big idea of evolution and climate change thanks to those shipped out scientists - it's kind of complicated since a lot of that change has to do with the massive movement of energy that are a result of our technological advances.)
If you think nature is so exciting in the rain forest, or Antarctica, or that it's only the rattlers that are the cool snakes because they make good TV - it's really sad because every single climate and region is beautiful. That's right where you live now. And if it isn't beautiful, momentous, rich or fertile where you live then there are lots of other issues that also relate to your local biology that are going to be relevant to you in other ways besides finding peace in your own landscape.
That said, I know in my heart that a lot of the problems we have with nature have a lot to do with confusion between science, spirit, mind, heart, observations, power, and domination over other people and animals.
It's the goal of this project to offer space to learn about and come to protect the natural world and also to feel that connection grow in your heart as you learn to appreciate and help the life that exists where you live.
In high school I took biology twice, first the regular class, then the A.P. class - but the AP test was expensive so I didn't take that test. In college I studied history and anthropology and I was really interested in why the europeans came to the americas. The history of science was also fascinating, along with how different cultures used technologies in the past, and how those technologies might have effected everyday life.
I got aggravated at anthropology because I was naive about the subject and expected it to be a really great way to learn about the entire world. Instead they wouldn't stop talking about the problems of colonization and so eventually I got sick of the whiny reflective crap and gave up on social sciences all together.
I took an entomology class which was really inspiring and awesome. Then I graduated and taught at an outdoor education nature camp for public school kids. Eventually, I moved to san francisco, did arty theater puppetry stuff for a while, and got involved in digital learning. The Exploratorium hired me to make websites, and that was really stimulating and I worked on a lot of interesting projects. After a while, I was looking for a change, so I went to the Science Museum of Minnesota where I'm making community websites for nanoscientists.
At the Exploratorium, there were a few of us who are super super bird nerds. We would watch David Attenborough movies together. We would go birding. A lot of us take the attitudes towards inquiry-based learning into our nature escapades, but we aren't park rangers, we don't have biology degrees. We are just regular people who have random passions for learning about birds, plants, slime, lichens, mushrooms. So those attitudes really influenced me, and helps kick off this project.
As for my hobbies - I am taking botanical illustration classes at the Minnesota School of Botanical Art. This has been wonderful because the teachers are excellent and finally I feel like I've learned how to draw for real. My brain must be really visual, because drawing is more like writing to me and to not be able to draw was like not being able to read or write.
In Minneapolis, there is a park near my house. It is very residential and sort of suburban. There are really really big trees - maples, a really big norway spruce tree. I saw an owl once. There are lots and lots of bunny rabbits. I live a few blocks away from the Mississippi River.
When I first moved here, the very first thing I noticed was the squirrels. After being here a while, the squirrels' personalities are starting to show up. I don't know which squirrel is which, because there are so many of them, but I have seen them do acrobatic tricks. Also, one day the dudes were in heat and were grunting and it was very scary.
© 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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