Beaver Festival – Page 6

Friends & Family

heidi08 Uncategorized June 11, 2010

Photo: Cheryl Reynolds

Ahhh the new baby always brings out the best in family and friends. Today this photo ran in the San Francisco Chronicle with a very glowing article by longtime beaver-beat reporter Carolyn Jones. The article has an “alls well that ends well” feeling, and quotes from Skip Lisle and Dave Scola as well. I, of course, wish she had mentioned Worth A Dam or the beaver festival in the article (an article entirely structured around my press release and our half hour interview, including the latin for beaver!) but at least she got the story straight and the details of our very special family in print for all to see. And, most important, it was the first beaver article in history without a single “pun” in the title to indicate that this wasn’t “important news” and the story shouldn’t be taken seriously. You can help us out by “voting” for my comment so that the important things Carolyn forgot to mention get mentioned!

As if that wasn’t enough good news for one morning, my post yesterday about the contest in Lithuania prompted this heroic response from Alex Hiller, our foreign correspondent in Frankfurt Germany.

Thank you for your information about Riga beavers at risk. As a participant of the 5th International Beaver Symposium in Vilnius, Lithuania, the previous year I decided instantly to go to Riga, Latvia, checking on the beaver site and considering proper solutions to keep the beavers. I just got a Lufthansa flight ticket to Riga, Latvia, departing in Frankfurt, Germany on July 21 for a week to be spent over there. Expect online reports and photos as your approved foreign correspondent.
Best Alex

Skip Lisle & Alex Hiller at 5th annual Beaver Symposium in Lithuania

Alex tells me that he’s already hard at work, translating articles and looking up photos. I can’t tell you how pleased and proud we are of your committment Alex! On behalf of the beavers of baltic countries everywhere, THANK YOU!!!

One more act of kindness worth mentioning comes from our good web designer friend Jean Matuska of JM Design. I was beginning to receive ominous error messages when I posted new articles on the website, something dire about a “Fatal error” which terrified me. Jean went searching through her tool kit and figured out the solution, redesigning our memory limits and voila! No more fatalities! Thanks so much Jean! We will leave a smaller data footprint in the future!

If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,
“That they could get it clear?”
“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

Lewis Carrol

Help From Our Friends…

heidi08 Beaver News, Beaver-themed merchandise, Festival June 2, 2010

Always looking for a way to raise interest and support, I thought about the fluttered pulses beaver hero Skip Lisle generated when he shirtlessly installed the flow device at the beaver dam. Receptionists, litigators and project managers flocked in droves to the windowsills to watch muscles ripple in the water and I don’t think the appreciative sounds they were making were all based on the relief that the beavers would be safe. Mind you, Skip is a family man, married with children, and devoted to his school-teacher wife. But there is not a single event where the scrapbook is displayed that at least three fondly remembering women do not approach the Gazette photo page and wistfully recall their admiration.

Knowing this, I personally added a shirtless man with a shovel to the beaver diorama that Jon made for last years’s earthday event and was very pleased with the effect. Once at a Farmer’s market display the former photographer for the Gazette told me that they jokingly discussed using the photos of Skip to “make a calendar” to raise money. Hmm…. Recently I approached the photographer to dig up a photo or two, and wrote Skip to see whether he’d be willing to grace it with an autograph. I’m very pleased to announce that both said yes, and we will offer a lovely framed photo of the hero at work in the silent auction.

Let the bidding wars begin!

If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,
“That they could get it clear?”
“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

Lewis Carrol

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“Yes, Yes! My City Said Yes, Yes!”

heidi08 Festival, Uncategorized December 31, 2010

(With apologies to Eddie Cantor.) I just can’t think of any better musical number to announce the results of the Parks, Marina, Recreation & Library Commission meeting last night. They were reviewing the final request for the Third Annual Beaver Festival this August 7th to be held in the still nameless (but destined-to-be-called Beaver Park) in downtown Martinez. The commission took a brief look at the application, spoke in glowing terms about the tile wall and the events popularity, and gave a unanimous thumbs up! The whole thing took about 10 minutes.

Later that night I got an email from Shell that the festival will receive a sponsorship of 500 dollars from the oil company. All in all it was a wildly positive beaver day, and it needed a big, big hollywood theme song.

Beaver donations…

heidi08 Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers April 30, 2010

In the past seven days we’ve received a flurry of donations or promised donations for the silent auction at the beaver festival. Last year we raised nearly 2000 dollars and our most popular items were a certificate for two to Safari West, dinner at chez panisse and a years supply of Peets coffee! This year we are hoping for bigger and better offerings to tempt open the hearts and wallets of the beaver devoted and the beaver-curious.

{column1}The Friday before last I had a remarkable conversation with Niels Usden, the owner of Castoro Cellars in Paso Robles. His ‘dam fine wine’ has been a regular at Worth A Dam planning meetings and discussion groups, and is a natural addition to the auction. I was still ready to offer five more persuasive reasons why he should consider donating to the festival when he asked me for a formal donation letter and said it would definitely happen! Clearly a man who was nicknamed ‘il castoro’ in Italy understand how to support hard work!

Back when I was excitedly writing about Hope Ryden’s remarkable book, ‘Lily Pond‘, we struck up a little correspondence. I was particularly interested in the powerful solitary grief the author communicated about the loss of her beaver heroine, and how different that was from Martinez, where the experience was so communal and shared. She generously donated a signed first edition of her book and shipped it to me last week. It is dedicated “To Martinez”.{/column1}

{column2}

{/column2} On wednesday I got a lovely email from New Jersey beaver-advocate Sarah Sumerville of the Unexpected Wildlife Refuge. She is very pleased about the work that we’ve been doing for beavers all over, and offered to ship the following items for our auction;

· T-shirt (you pick the size) “I support the Unexpected” with beaver – back/ our logo and name on crest – front;

· Mug – our logo, cream mug/green logo;

· Cards – b/w linoleum block carvings by fifth graders with poems by Beaver Defenders (12 cards / 2 of each in the pack of 24 – fit legal envelops);

· 8×10 beaver puzzle (our dining beaver photo on balsam wood scrapped from the local yacht manufacturer – laser cut);

· Books: Beaversprite: my years building a Beaver sanctuary by Dorothy Richards (Hope Sawyer Buyukmihci wrote it for her from her notes)

· Year’s subscription to The Beaver Defenders newsletter.

Did I mention Sarah is a very enthusiastic friend? She also suggested that we poke other wildlife groups to offer items and it got me thinking about all those attractive shirtless b&w photos the Gazette snapped of Skip while he was installing the flow device. Maybe they’d be willing to offer one or two and Skip would be willing to autograph? Maybe Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife could be persuaded to part with a year of their newsletter? Maybe the Lands Council could part with one of those snappy vests or Sherri Tippie could donate one of those little clay beaver figures she is famous for making? Certainly a copy of the new Beaver Solutions DVD just HAS to be included!

Any other ideas? It’s not even May 1st. We have lots of time to beg!

The Way Forward

heidi08 Environmental, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History October 18, 2010

Last night there was a meeting of minds with Worth A Dam regulars and some new supporters who wanted to understand the group better. Plans were made for Earth Day, the Dow wetlands event, and early thoughts about the Festival. The clear-headed mother of our tree-planting eagle scout was interested in having another “jewelry making party” to create more beaver key chains, necklaces and bracelets to benefit our silent auction. We thought that would be an excellent idea! Our artist Fro, mentioned that she had learned how to make an amazing rooting compound using willow leaves in a blender, which she swore worked a charm and wasn’t a recipe for beaver margaritas. There was a discussion of the tiles and recent changes to the habitat, with a sneak preview of the adorable temporary tattoo we are going to make available for kids at our upcoming events.

Scott Artis, of JournOwl, who has been advocating so tirelessly for his burrowing owls, came and told his impassioned and all too familiar story: city lies, developer manipulations, and inverted priorities by Fish & Game (protect the permit, not the species). As some of you might know, Scott is a very tall fellow with an exceedingly gentle spirit; (he must have left 6 feet behind him somewhere in middle school). It was amazing, then, to see him grow even taller before our very eyes as he spoke fiercely about his struggle. Scott’s broad understanding of the issues, dedicated research, eloquent writing and passionate advocacy have pushed the burrowing owl story solidly to the conservation forefront. He recently connected with a writer from the Smithsonian magazine who will be following up with a story this year.

Our third new guest was Rick the wikipedia historian who has been doing such stellar work updating beaver entries and researching the prevalence of beaver in California. He had offered to pick me up from my conference in San Jose and come to the meeting, and of course we had lots to talk about on the way. We stopped off to view the dams and the tiles, which he found very impressive. Rick got involved originally because the 85 year-old man he had bought his house from had told him that he could “fly fish in the stream that ran there” all year long. Of course the stream now is dry for the summer and fall, and Rick wondered if there might be an inexpensive remedy. This got him thinking about beavers and when he approached the ranger he was told “there were no beavers here” which got him interested in the history. Turns out Captain Sutter bought 1500 beaver pelts in 1841 from mission San Jose, so that didn’t make much sense. This naturally brought him to us!

Rick was a veritable font of knowledge, describing the competing trapping influences in California and the different routes they followed into the state. He knew the particulars of what beavers were “(re)introduced” and where by fish and game, and even knew what subspecies. He is a solidly respectable researcher and physician who had the bemused air of a man had been completely ambushed by his overwhelming enthusiasm for this new and compelling beaver mystery story. It was clear he wished there were more hours in a day, more days in a week, more time for beaver pdfs, and more money to spend on endless historical volumes that might hold the elusive answer. Rick said several times that he wished there was a clinical term for this hopeless “beaver addiction”. but I assured him there wasn’t one.

It seemed perfectly normal to me.