Quick Updates

Despite the lack of updates, I'm still at EARTH and the time is being well-spent. Here's some of what's been going on...

Susan and Josh visited a couple weekends ago
We went into a local town Sequirres to buy food and look for Josh's notebook, which unfortunately didn't turn up. Saw the worst street "performer" I've ever encountered playing a bicyle handle like a trumpet and pretending to fret this piece of yarn that he tied to the contraption... That day we hiked all over campus, eventually making our way to the forest reserve where we camped. Security was peeved about the visitors, despite my having talked with the administration. Susan stayed another night while Josh made a quick trip to San Jose. We botanized, played music, cooked stew... and then they left.

Started a new unit of Work Experience class
Helping teach elementary school with Satish. From 7 to 11 in the morning, we help instill a sense of environmental responsibility by planting vegetables and playing outside. This is much less tiring than swinging a machete for 6 hours. The school has about 40 kids ranging 6 years of age taught in two different classrooms.

Went to Panama to renew my passport
Spent three days in Bocas del Toro amidst tropical islands in the Caribbean. Spent time at the beach despite buckets of rain. Relaxed in hammocks and met a lot of Europeans. This is a great area to visit... a couple national parks, several beaches, cheap everything, and still relatively undeveloped (but growing fast)

Surfed in Puerto Viejo
Luke, Emilio, Lauren, Annabela, and I just got back from a quick trip to this small town on the Caribbean. Camped at a hostel just a short walk from a beautiful beach. Tried surfing for the first time and had a good time despite getting crushed by a few waves. I'd recommend visiting this town for a couple days, but there is less to do here than at Bocas del Toro. Plus it is a little bit ahead of Bocas in commercial developement and tourism (though much less so than the Pacific coast of CR).

Conservation and Agriculture

Today I listened to a talk by Glen Chown, U of M grad and director of the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy (GTRLC), an NGO based in northwestern MI. Glen is visiting Costa Rica to learn and share experiences regarding his work. Having conserved a large amount of land in the form of national parks, Costa Rica and northern MI are suprisingly similar.

However, what makes the GTRLC unique is its independent status as an NGO, which allows it to move quickly in acquiring land, without bearoucratic barriers often encountered when working through the government. The GTRLC is about 15 years old and has grown tremendously from its small idealistic start. With the simple goal of "Protecting significant natural, scenic, and farm lands—now and for all future generations", it took some time for the organization to mature and gain credibility but today the GTRLC is a powerful force in environmental work.

Recently, the GTRLC was able to save around 6,000 acres (including miles of Lake Michigan shoreline) from being developed by a nuclear power company. Much of this land includes active farms, something which sets the GTRLC apart from other conservation organizations. Rather than drawing a sharp distinction between untouched, primary forest and settled farmland, the GTRLC views these farms as a significant part of Michigan's landscape, culture, and economy, and therefore worth the effort of preserving. To protect these farms, the GTRLC buys developement rights to the land, ensuring the continued production of food while saving the farmer from pressure to sell land to developement companies. Though the farmers are free to practice agriculture as they please (within the limits of the non-developement, conservational contract), many are starting to shift towards organic and more sustainable methods

Glen and the GTRLC are very concerned with the consideration of both agriculture and ecology as inseperable components of our environment, economy, and the existence of the human species. This mentality is part of a recent and important trend in these fields towards the study of agroecology, which has helped promote environmentally viable models of agriculture such as intercropping, organic practices, and permaculture, a more extreme example. Where traditional agronomists seek to maximize the intensity of agriculture (largely at the expense of the broader environment), the traditional environmentalist seeks total preservation to the point of viewing agricultural land as beyond the point of saving. The GTRLC has even recieved criticism from parts of the environmentalist community who hold this more traditional perspective.

University of Michigan Professors John Vandermeer and Ivette Perfecto are also active in the field of agroecology and recently wrote this letter to Science explaining the need to reevaluate our perception of the environment. I am looking forward to working with John in June and July in an investigation of the interactions between several insect species on a coffee farm in Chiapas, Mexico.

Another Sloth

From a while ago... spotted near the beach in Cahuita.

interesting reading

This Tuesday my group is giving a presentation in Food Systems and World Economy. The profesor has selected topics and readings which each group will present in class over the course of the trimester. Our topic is the Skull and Bones.

Having already been aware of the Yale secret society of which both John Kerry and George W. Bush are members, this topic should be easy to present (especially because the class is in english). However, I find it interesting (disturbing, too) that this topic has only now come to light within a serious academic environment upon my arrival in a foreign country.

This organization's members are selected from Yale's undergraduate class each year with the purpose of building and consolidating power, wealth, and influence within the group above all other ends. The Skull and Bones have had considerable influence in the United States Government, the CIA, US mass media, and finance/commerce/industry. While there is a mountain of documented history on the society, conspiracey theorists have this group in virtual control over the world (as a little brother of the illuminati).

Though the extent of the Skull & Bones' goals and actual endeavours is not completely known, the idea of power seeking secret societies in general seems to come in direct conflict with actualizing a democratic world. Looking forward to discussing this in class.

A smaller, and much more insignificant secret society, known as Michigauma, exists at the University of Michigan. This year there was some controversy over several "activist/progressive" types who accepted membership to the group. In my opinion, the situation shows the dire state of campus politics in Ann Arbor. Something SPLIF (Students for Peace, Liberty, Independence, and Freedom) could have had a lot of fun with.

Wednesday, March 1, 2006, 6:42 PM

Things have slowed down for the moment and I've had more time to relax... There are some good musicians at EARTH. The other night Christian, Emilio, and myself had a nice jam going with a guitar, bass, and mandolin.

Speaking of music, I didn't bring any on my trip due to packing space and lack of a cd player... This has turned out to be a bad decision. If anyone reads this and has 15 minutes of free time, please burn me some tunes! My mailing address is at the top of the page. I will be very thankful.

Everything else is going well. I've made some good friends, but because of the language barrier it's hard to get to know people extremely well. Some guys from Costa Rica are taking a group of our friends to their homes in Guanacaste after the tremester to relax and beach-hop for a week.