Karen Boone – Worth A Dam

My father ’tis of thee

heidi08 Beaver Art, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History, Who's saving beavers now? September 5, 2017

As most of you know, this wonderful creation was the painstaking product of then 12 year old Ian Timothy [Boone] and finished in 2008. The joyful banjo music in the background was written and performed by his father an accomplished musician, Joel Timothy. Ian went on to win 6 scholastic medals and graduate with honors. We became friends for obvious reasons and when he applied to the Disney school of animation I wrote him a letter of recommendation. He was one of only 15 students to be accepted.

I met them all in Martinez when the family made a stop on their way to a film festival. Both parents seemed happy and appropriately proud of their son. But you never really know what the inside of people’s lives are like. After Ian went to college his parents divorced and his mother, Karen Boone (a gifted graphic artist in her own right) wrote to tell me that Joel was a struggling alcoholic who she couldn’t stay with anymore. She thought maybe it had been hard on her son who had focused on the stop motion filmaking as a way to cope.

(I was shocked, and remember that I couldn’t help thinking like a therapist that maybe his father hadn’t been able to sustain sobriety by taking things one day at a time, so Ian took things one moment at a time.)

After the divorce, Ian cut ties with his father and took his mother’s name, so he’s now Ian Boone. Ian never spoke about the divorce or the drinking with me. But we remained friends. He came to our festival last year and told me that he had left college early and started working for Bix Pix in Hollywood, working on the Tumble leaf series. He had not resumed contact with his father. And he had been learning to play the banjo.

Yesterday he posted on Facebook that his father had died over the weekend. I hope he doesn’t mind that I’m sharing it here. It really touched me and I thought it should be shared.

I just wanted to let everyone know, especially people in Louisville, that my dad, Joel Timothy died early Saturday morning, in Chestertown, Maryland. He had been sick for a while and in June was diagnosed with colon cancer that was expected to be treatable. But between the chemo, radiation, and already being very weak, he took a turn for the worse last week. He was hospitalized in intensive care. By the time I got there he was on oxygen and mostly unresponsive.

Our relationship for the last several years was not good. There were a lot of different sides to him, he struggled with alcoholism and he did and said a lot of horrible things. But there are still a lot of good memories, he was an immensely talented musician and creative mind, as a storyteller and performer. He had a short stature but big personality and always a way to make people laugh. I wouldn’t have had the same start in animation without his help with Beaver Creek, and I think he tried to support me in the best ways that he knew how.

Fathers are complicated and somehow keep being so even after they die. My heart goes out to Ian who was emotionally courageous to speak of this publicly and revisit the man who had given him his childhood and at the same time partly taken it away. In reading the countless comments by his fellow musicians it is clear that Joel was a gifted, fulsome, troubled soul. Even though his life is over, I’m sure Ian’s journey with him is just beginning. I am constantly surprised by how much my own father has continued changing after his death, at least in my own heart where it matters most to me.

R.I.P. Beaver Creek.

Too many updates

heidi08 Beavers, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, Who's saving beavers now? August 23, 2014

Lots of beaver news this morning, I heard from Scott Artis the designer of this website that he would be happy to do an update for us. Now he’s local again and working for Audubon Canyon and displayed for his new non profit Urban Birds Foudation at the festival. I, for one, can’t wait until this tired old jalopy is transformed back and into a sleek cyber Mercedes. Thanks Scott!

Congratulations to Cheryl who just found out yesterday that her lovely photo of two kits will be in the 2015 watershed calendar. It’s the loving work of artist John Finger with snippets of photos all through the dates, and useful information scattered throughout. We are especially proud because in addition to being a beautiful calendar. it hangs in every public works department and county supervisors office for the entire year and reminds them to be nice to beavers.

(And believe you me, most of them need reminding!)

Here’s the fantastic photo that will appear some month in the future. She is between computers at the moment and lacking funds so if a reader of this website just happened to get a big inheritance you might think about helping her get back to full photo capacity soon. You can even ear mark it as a donation thru Worth A Dam and get a tax deduction?

Think of the children!

Now many county supervisors need reminding but apparently not all. Yesterday the county supervisor/former mayor of Napa wrote me that he loved the beaver information I sent, passed it along to everyone, and he was so excited he was asking flood control to put together a ‘beaver symposium’ next year!

Someone pinch me, I think I’m dreaming.

I have been strangely afflicted with planning at the moment, and can’t seem to stop scheming for next year’s festival. I want to hit up the fall grant cycle for funds and was trying to think of an art project that would be educational enough to open their tightly closed purse strings. Around 4 in the morning on Friday it hit me. Our indefatigable artist FRo could paint an archway on a canvas tarp and then kids on the day could paint in the animals with the beavers as the keystone! It teaches a complicated ecological concept, honors kids contribution, involves the community and it would be sooo cute! And then afterwards when its all dry and finished. We could use it as the backdrop in our display for years to come! FRo and I chatted about the idea yesterday, and she gave me a list of materials and how it would need to be prepared and stored.

Keystone arch here we come!

I’ve been bothering lots of people lately. I even wrote Ian Timothy’s mom to see if I could lure her into sketching something. Remember Karen Boone was the designer behind the stunning Kentucky Derby graphic pictured below. Can’t you just imagine the suggestion of a beaver head and beaver tail on a flag or a t-shirt? Me too. I have the dream but not the talent. So I thought maybe I’d write her.

Thinking about your beautiful Kentucky derby art, I’m wondering if you ever considered a beaver outline sketch? We would love to do a tshirt some year that was a beaver head on front and tail on back, but can only imagine the artistic wonders of a minimalist sketch outline? Maybe someday you’ll be inspired to give it a shot?

Karen Boone wrote back this morning. “I would be happy to do that for you! Plenty of work in, but will put it on my fun to do list.”

Thank you so much Karen for putting us on the FUN list! That is really exciting and would be so full circle if it works out!

On a final note, the friend of a friend who agreed to process our depredation permit stats turns out to be the very respected statistician for Acorn, a psychometrics firm usually handling important questions like does cognitive behavior therapy reduce symptoms more quickly than Lexapro? But now, amazingly he’s committed to handling beaver data. He asked for me to include stats on population density, acreage and sq miles of water so he could run a full regression analysis. It took every waking spare moment I had this week but I finished the updated list yesterday at 3.00 pm and I’m sooooo excited. This means we can partial out effects like how much water an area has, or how densely packed the human population is, and just zoom in on how murderous the CDFG officer was who signed the permit. Which means I can write the Chuck Bonham with our findings and specify with greater credibility the changes he needs to make.

I can’t wait.

Snips and Tails

heidi08 Beaver News, Beavers, City Reports, Educational, Environmental, Friends of Martinez Beavers, kits May 7, 2012

Now before we get started today I have some housekeeping to attend to. Yesterday I received an email from Joe Eaton, a fast friend of the Martinez Beavers and the author of my favorite article ever on the death of the mother beaver for the Berkeley Daily Planet. He said he stopped by to see the dams and thought they were abandoned (very high tide) and when he checked the website didn’t see any discussion of the Martinez Beavers since March! Were they okay?

I though that since a friendly faced didn’t know, you might not know either! You can always check for new sightings under the “sightings” tab on the menu bar on the top of the page. It will tell you what was seen, where, what time, and by whom. Just in case Joe is not the only one who doesn’t know! The sightings page is managed by Worth A Dam champion Lory Bruno whose friendly face you will see at the silent auction booth this summer. Here’s today’s update

May 7th – 6:15am – One beaver was seen above the primary dam and possibly a sighting of another beaver. Not sure if the same one came out but the second one was a bit smaller it seemed.. It came up to the lodge area and went underwater. Seems like there is something going on at the old lodge and there looked like new branches were on the lodge site, which was heavily mudded Saturday morning.CR

Next, our Kentucky Derby watching friends might find it interesting to know that the logo for the Derby was created by none other that the mother of our beloved Ian Timothy (creator of the beaver creek series).His father of course wrote and performed the music for the series. Here’s photographic proof of a very talented family!

You may remember that last week I wrote about the beavers at Silver Lake in CT which Councilman Thorpe described as “wreaking havoc” on the ecosystem. Of course I wrote him about the good that beaver do for the birds and fish and wildlife and he wrote back (in a manner I can only describe as ‘clipped‘) and said he knew all that but that this area was special because of a sewer line. Which, if true, you might have thought he’d mention to the media. Anyway, there’s a nice rebuttal to his alarms this morning

As the Record-Journal’s Richie Rathsack reported, there’s also evidence that the pond, larger now thanks to the beaver work, is more attractive to other wildlife. He also described dozens of trees along the shore with signs of beaver gnawing, as well as small trails left by beavers dragging trees through the woods to the water’s edge.

My strong suspicion is also that the proprietors of this so-called beaver hut are not paying their proper share of property taxes, and the beavers should probably be told that if there’s any vehicle involved that in Connecticut we tax you when you buy one, while you own one and once again when you sell one. Those trails the beavers are building should also be candidates for some sort of review and taxation, I’d wager.

It’s a clever bit of writing. Go read the whole thing.

Now let’s head even farther East for our final update. With beaver advocates chipping away at the resistance in the United Kingdom, check out this mornings BBC report on beavers in Wales!

It is thought that beavers, while common in medieval Wales, became extinct by the 16th Century. But Ms Girardi said she believed the beavers remained “keystone species,” whose re-introduction would increase biodiversity.

On a final note it’s Monday so if you’re very, very good you can watch this video from Peter Smith at the Wildwood Trust in England. A very stalwart, enthusiastic member of the Save the Free Beavers of the River Tay died two weeks ago, Mike Johnston. So Peter very nobly made sure that one of these kits was named after him. I guess its theoretically possibly you might see something cuter in your entire lifetime, but it surely isn’t likely! Enjoy!