First off, I think Shana Weber and all of her efforts at Princeton are awesome, and I hope that Lafayette can soon make similar strides in sustainability efforts. I felt that Dr. Weber really did “uncover sustainability” at her talk. The question of how to nurture an ethos of sustainability is one that she has clearly striven to answer.

College campuses are truly a prime spot to develop sustainable practices as a living laboratory that thrives off the elements of engagement, teaching, communication, and research. Colleges hold a great deal of prestige and influence, and small scale successes across campuses have the potential to spread beyond to influence the nation and the world. Lafayette has so many students and faculty with great ideas, though they are not always feasible. This positive sustainability influence might be enough to encourage the school to place a higher value on the development of these practices.

Dr. Weber made an excellent point in saying that an integral part of a liberal arts education must be a focus on sustainability. Lafayette needs to make this a higher priority throughout the campus. One of the ideas I particularly enjoyed was that water bottles full of helpful information are passed out to the first year students right upon moving to campus. What a positive message from the very beginning! I hope to have a strong coordinator like Shana Weber and to see more emphasis on the sustainable efforts at Lafayette in the future.

After looking at the images from the Course of the Empire set, we had a thought about how this related to our site. When looking at historical images and reading about the history of the industry of the Bushkill you can imagine at some point in time how busy and alive things along the Bushkill were. In a way we found this to be like the Consummation of the Empire. As time has gone by the destruction of this empire, or industry, has occurred. As we have discussed in previous posts we now see our site currently as a sort of infrastructure graveyard, in a way similar to the image of Desolation in the last image of the set. As structures lay in ruin in this image they also lay in ruin at our site. Furthermore, we discussed a sense of optimism in this image in class, that perhaps the clouds were clearing and there was to be a revival. This is also how we felt as we constantly felt the potential in this site for something more, to become once again a more natural place or a part of the community. It was interesting to see this piece the other day as it gave us something to compare and contrast our ideas and progression of thought about our site to.

We also pulled together some of our own photos to put against the collection. Seeing the images side by side really helped us imagine how drastically the area has changed and went along with these recent thoughts we had.

Additional interesting history tidbits!

“Butz park is a preserved parcel adjacent to state route 22. The topography is extremely steep and no recreation features exist on the park. It is a remainder parcel from highway construction” -http://www.easton-pa.gov/rec/openspace.pdf

Really cool website of additional images from 1752 to 1900 of Easton and along the Bushkill (photos from Lehigh >:l). Here is one that displays some of our site!

http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/cdm4/beyond_viewer.php?CISOPTR=7660&ptr=7896&searchworks=cat30&DMTHUMB=1

Thursday, I had the honor of having Dr. Shawna Weber meet with my EVST Capstone class to answer our questions about her Department of Sustainability at Princeton and then also share our ideas with her about what could potentially be done at Lafayette, for feedback. Dr. Weber was extremely well spoken, and shared with us a lot of insight. I loved how successful the ‘Drink Local’ campaign has been at Princeton, and how committed the Office of Sustainability, and the students are to the program and the idea. Personally, I think this is one of the easiest things we could do here. Putting information about the environmental clubs and organizations in the bottle would be a great way to get the word out separate from a table at a club fair. We would of course need to put in more fill-up stations.

Another thing she spoke about with my class, not in her lecture, was the pre-orientation programs that Princeton has. One is focused on civic engagement, the other is an outdoor action trip. The outdoor trip is designed to get students outside and develop a love of nature through outdoor activities and a sustainability curriculum. These programs are now mandatory for all students starting next year. We already have POSP, which would match the civic engagement program, but it would be awesome if we could start an outdoor/sustainability program. I think this would be something that would be relatively simple to start, especially if students/faculty worked with local park rangers and outdoorsy professors. My capstone class, or a similar one, could work to create the sustainability curriculum (with the help of a future Sustainability Director?!?)

Dr. Weber did a great job explaining the importance and successes of sustainability programs at colleges and universities in a way that was easy to absorb and agree with. Hopefully she helped to convince the president and provost the importance of working towards a similar system!! It was exciting to see such a large crowd of students there with such important administrators also there!

I was so excited about Shana Weber’s lecture on Thursday night!! She far surpassed my expectations and really did a wonderful job presenting on college campus sustainability.

Weber talked a lot about how college campuses are living labs and how we must take advantage of the opportunities that this atmosphere allows. There are hundreds of brilliant minds on Lafayette’s campus and we should not be constrained by the label of our majors. There is the potential for so many multi-disiplinary projects to be done on campus but in order to do so we must pop “major” bubble that we put ourselves in. Like we discussed in class, we cannot pre-package our college experience and only work in our fields otherwise we will never reach our full potential.

Sustainability allows for so much multi-disiplinary work and that was clear throughout Shana Weber’s entire presentation. The “Do it in the dark” campaign was a perfect example of this. Weber connected a sustainability employee with someone in the psychology department who then collaborated with a tech start-up near Princeton in order to track energy use on campus. So cool right?! Without a sustainability director these connections never would have been made and a lot of the progress that Princeton has made with sustainability could not have been done.

There is so much room for sustainability change to be made at Lafayette so PLEASE lets fight to get a director of our own! We need a voice in administration to make this change and to make the change effective. President Byerly and Provost Abu Rizvi both came from schools in Vermont, a state that is far ahead of others in sustainable practices, right before they were hired by Lafayette. So I am surprised that they have yet to make significant change regarding our campus’ environmental impact. They have seen how well it can work out so why not bring it to Laf too? Hopefully this change is coming down the pipeline and we can join the many colleges who are becoming leaders in sustainable living.

Maggie Gray’s discussion on local food and labor laws was truly eye-opening. I have always been interested in the environmental impacts of food production and always framed monoculture/industrial farms as the bad guys. This semester I am taking Gender and Development and from this course I have started to think about the impact of development and gendered labor roles. However, it was not until Maggie Gray’s talk that I put the 2 topics together. I always assumed that “local” farms were all around better, including better treatment of their workers. I also assumed that these gendered labor roles and negative affects of them were problems in only developing countries. I learned that this is not the case at all and that farm workers in Upstate New York need to be treated with more respect just as much as workers on farms in the developing world need to be treated with more respect.

Gray discussed how farm workers’ jobs are unstable, require long hours and they receive low wages. Despite these negatives of the job, many do not speak up out of fear of losing their jobs or because their boss has given them “benefits” in the past. These can include providing employer housing for the worker and their family to live in, help with receiving a green card and permission to use farm owned vehicles. Gray described these favors as paternalism which creates a docile work force. Therefore they do not speak up when something else goes wrong.

As a consumer we assume that when we buy local and/or organic food that we are doing the right thing, when in fact the humans that harvested the food are not being treated fairly.  I think that inspecting and then certifying the farms for good labor practices would be a good way to tackle this problem. Then similarly to the USDA organic seals, food packaging could include these labels so that the consumer knows what goes on on these farms and can make an informed decision when buying food.

Today, I attended a talk by Maggie Gray, a Lafayette alumnae, entitled “Labor and the Locavore.” I hadn’t done much research on her before the talk, so besides what I gathered from the name of the lecture, I didn’t quite know what the talk would be about. Essentially, her argument is that the local food movement has created a false binary between factory and small farms which has, in turn, caused farm workers at small farms to be overlooked. These farm workers are deserving of attention because, in many cases, their conditions are just as bad, if not worse, than those of workers in larger factory farms.

I learned some appalling things about worker conditions in small farms in upstate NY. The law does not require employers to give farm workers a rest day, allow for collective bargaining, or require employers to pay overtime. Many employers prefer that their workers do not learn English so that they would have very little ability to leave their job for a new one. The legal status of many of these workers coupled with paternalistic/favoring actions that employers make take and rural isolation create a psychological, social, and legal barrier which prevents workers from trying to better their pay and work conditions. Many of these problems, besides the paternalism aspect, are very similar to what I have learned happens in factory farms. The difference here is that since the local food movement is branded as the antithesis of factory farms, everything that goes on in the production of this food is completely moral and socially just, which allows these offenses to go largely unnoticed and un-discussed.

In short, I agree with her on the fact that attention and scrutiny must be brought to this situation. However, I think there is a fine line between pointing out an issue within a generally good thing and bashing that good thing as a whole. She pointed out the hypocrisy of “locavores” who would defend farmers when confronted with her stories of offenses against farm workers. I think this hypocrisy is true to some extent, but these people are generally doing the best they can with the information that they have. Gray made people who are trying to live morally look evil when all they really need is to read her book. I fear, however, that Gray’s most important audience is the one who she seems to be alienating.

“Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear – the earth remains, slightly modified” (219).

This line from Ed Abbey’s, Down the River, references the curse of man and how our own hubris will be our downfall. When we looked at the Thomas Cole’s series of paintings ‘The Course of Civilization’ is was reminded of this quote.

One of the other paintings we looked at was called ‘Manifest Destiny’, which happens to be the name of another painting by Alexis Rockman. The painting, shown below and also named Manifest Destiny, shows an underground city that is being reclaimed by the ocean and ocean life. We traditionally think of Manifest Destiny in terms of American Expansionists in the 19^th century, but in this case we have the Earth and Ocean, reclaiming what mankind took before civilization fell.

The painting is full of symbolism other themes worthy of discussion. There is actually a full size print on display in the Nurture Nature Center in Easton.

On the heels of our second response paper about rivers, I continue to be interested by the question of how rivers connect us. In our story of place, Tory, Owen, and I are examining the role of the Bushkill Creek in the greater College Hill area’s history. In our early research, we have found that periodic flooding has had an impact on our site and the surrounding area.

On Sunday, I went down to the dam behind The Spot to get some preliminary footage of the river’s flow. Although I wasn’t there long (as I didn’t want to disturb the sleeping man), I was able to capture the flow what seemed to be a relatively tame creek. Today, the flow of the Bushkill was dramatically different. After last night’s rain, the water level was significantly higher and the suspended load in the water was much more substantial. While the creek was nowhere near flood level, I was surprised to see the dramatic change that one night of rain could have on the stage of the creek. With rain in the forecast for the next few days, I am interested to see how much higher the creek gets. While it would be unfortunate to see any amount of flooding, it would be an awesome connection to our story to see the creek top its banks while we are studying its history of flooding.

Today for conservation biology lab we took a trip to Mariton Wildlife Sanctuary. Mariton is a 200 acre park that is located over the Delaware River. The purpose of our lab was to compare the species richness and the diversity of the birds in two locations, one in the center of the park and the other along the edge of the sanctuary. To do this we went to our assigned spots in the park and in 15 minute intervals we observed and recorded the birds we heard and saw. Fortunately the Preserve Manager, who is really good at identifying bird calls and bird type,s came along with us to help us identify each bird call and sighting. While we were doing this and I was listening for bird calls and trying to identify each bird I kept thinking of this quote from The Diary of a Citizen Scientist where Russell writes, “When you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail, and when you’re looking for the larval burrow whole of a Western red-bellied tiger beetle, you see a surprising number of holes you’ve never seen before. Usually not the same size or shape, but you look inside anyway because you want to know: who lives in all these holes? (117).”

When we first started to listen for birds, I heard sounds I usually do not notice and every sound I heard I thought was a bird, when in reality the Preserve Manager said some of the sounds I was hearing were insects or frogs in the park. I really identified with Russel’s comparison to when you are a hammer everything looks like a nail and while I was listening for bird sounds for the first time everything sounded like a bird call. When the park manager would tell me they were not bird calls I was so curious what animal it was, but unfortunately he didn’t know for sure.

Some of the birds we identified at Mariton were common birds like cardinals and blue jays, but we also identified some other types of birds. Below are their names and pictures:

Red belly woodpecker:

Tuft Titmouse:

Downy Woodpecker:

Turkey Vulture: