Penny Chisholm – Worth A Dam

Good news on Sundays is an easy policy to follow. Especially when Napa wins the Wetland War once again. Credit Rusty Cohn for bravely visiting Friday afternoon Tulocay creek where the beavers are very slowly rebuilding their damaged dam. Guess what he saw?

Napa wins again — Woodduck in Tulocay Creek by Rusty Cohn

Ahhh this inspires a confession. There are three half-truths I regularly tell about our beavers in Alhambra Creek. The first is that the folks at the meeting all spoke up for beavers. That’s not entirely true, because there were at least 5 ‘nays’ out of the 50 pro-beaver speakers in attendance that night. They were deliberately positioned at the beginning and end of public comment for maximum effect. And they were the definite minority. But they were there.

The second is that Alhambra Creek hadn’t seen mink in 25 years. I actually don’t have a source for that except I surely hadn’t seen it before. And I’ve lived downtown as an adult for 25 years. And it sounds about right. Although I’ve been saying it for a decade so that’s more like 35 years. Which puts us somewhere in the eighties was wasn’t really known for the greatest creek restoration. But, it conveys the idea that we saw different things when the beavers came. So I had retained it in the canon.

And the third almost-lie I repeat, was told to me by ward 7 manager for East Bay Regional Parks. He has since died but Ted Radke was a big beaver supporter and avid duck hunter – and he told me early on that after the beavers came we saw WOOD DUCK for the first time.

He said it to me at the celebration for the 75 anniversary of EBRP, and he insisted it was true. But I never saw one, before or since, and shortly after he said it hooded mergansers were seen for the first time in their full colors. And they’re striking ducks, so one can easily imagine he got them confused. But it’s a good story because wood duck is the ‘crowning glory of ducks’ and intimately tied to beaver ponds. So I’m inclined to repeat his story as if it were true.

But never mind, because once again NAPATOPIA has beaten us to the punch.

Great photo Rusty, Jon and I both laughed aloud when we saw it. Because we never doubted you’d be first!

Yesterday three bright and beautiful copies of MIT professor Penny Chisholm’s book on the water cycle arrived for the silent auction. She included a note thanking us for saving beavers! They are so brilliantly colored and so well told that they’re sure to be a hit with the parents and children there. Your very smart grandchildren might deserve a copy now, so go here to get your own. Thank you SO much for your help Dr. Chisholm.

Next came a present all the way from Rhode Island, where artist Carrie Wagner of Sepialepus donated a truly breathtaking and whimsical map of our golden state. I had originally seen her map of New York which included beavers, and asked her to think about donating. When she enthusiastically agreed she told me that she used to live in San Francisco and knew just where to add the beavers to her California map. Then she sent this, which is large, beautifully detailed and glorious. I’m including a closeup of the beavers so you can appreciate them fully.

Thank you SO much Carrie for this wonderful donation! I can’t wait to see how folks appreciate this at the festival!

“An ephemeral stream is a stream or part of a stream that flows as a result of precipitation and is above the ground water reservoir. Ephemeral streams are found at southwestern perennial stream headwaters.”

The term ‘ephemeral’ is based on the Greek word εφήμερα meaning lasting for only a day. It applied to plants or insects that lived only a single day and later to ideas that quickly became useless or irrelevant. In California the naturalists talk a lot about ‘ephemeral’ streams, because they come and go with the rain and you can’t rely on them. Folks like to observe that these are the kinds of streams one gets ‘in the west’ and it’s always been that way.

Except it hasn’t.

Once upon a time California looked really different. There were no freeways or cell towers, no huge concrete dams, and the streams were unpolluted. There were different people living here. Peaceful tribes scattered all over the state. And guess what? Our GROUND WATER looked different too. Because there were these furry little engineers storing water everywhere like oompa loompas and making sure it didn’t get to the ocean until it had done its work on land. You can’t believe how moist and green everything looked.

Then the Russians, Canadians, French and Europeans hunted down the furry engineers and sold their protective outer coating for top dollar in what is sometimes called the fur trade, but what was actually the GROUND WATER TRADE.

California traded it’s precious groundwater for a few coins that were spent in other states.

Penny Chisholm is an MIT professor and award winning scientist who wanted to teach children about the origins of groundwater and worked with artist Molly Bang to explain it. The entire series looks fascinating but I’m especially drawn to this latest volume for obvious reasons. (Thank you to Robin Ellison of Napa for sending this my way.)

How the smallest, most abundant bacteria inspired a children’s book series

The pair has since created the “Sunlight Series,” a collection of children’s books written about different environmental topics from the point of view of the sun. The latest in the series, “Rivers of Sunlight: How the Sun Moves Water around the Earth,” explains the global water cycle.

The series is meant to stand the test of time by explaining fundamental processes, but that doesn’t stop Chisholm and Bang from briefly acknowledging humans’ uncertain impact on the environment by touching on topics such as climate change and fossil fuels. Chisholm asks, “If you don’t understand that the mass of plants come from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and that there’s a massive exchange of CO₂, from photosynthesis and respiration, how can you understand the role of fossil fuels and climate change?”

In 2013, Chisholm was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Barack Obama for her research. To balance teaching, conducting research, and writing books, Chisholm typically works a lot on the Sunlight Series over the summer, the time of year when Bang also resides in Massachusetts. “Everything I do is a lot of work, but it goes in spurts,” Chisholm said. She and Bang had been brainstorming a book topic for about a decade before publishing “Living Sunlight” in 2009.

Hurry for Penny! Making sense of water for everyone! There is a greater chance we will protect what we understand. The water cycle is pretty complicated and there were many parts to explain. But Penny made sure to include the real heroes in this tale. Check this out, because it makes her our new best friend and an ideal candidate to be on Mike’s Beaver Institute Advisory Board, don’t you agree?