parenting TipsThe Pond

Some cool parenting Tips images:

Hi,I did the following:,This blog is about ask a toddler or educating a baby.
Here you can choose to skip this, because not is parenting Tips,but classicFriendship is like earthenware: once broken, it can be mended; love is like a mirror: once broken, that ends it. (Josh Billings. American humorist)A friend is never known till a man has need. Your mind is like this water, my friend, when it is agitated, it becomes difficult to see, but if you allow it to settle, the answer becomes clear..Money is not everything. There‘s Mastercard & Visa. 。！！about parenting Tips tips :Socialize your baby early with plenty of play dates, Gymboree or Mommy and Me. If you hate baby-related activities, take her out to lunch with other people once in awhile.
Beautiful:

The Pond

Image by jacki-dee
Pretty sure this horizon is straight: one pole vertical, one tipped, and the terrain is rolling anyhow. This is the irrigation pond at my parents’ farm, currently the hazelnut farm. I find it maddingly difficult to take good photos of the places I see daily my whole life.

Here you can choose to skip this, because not is parenting Tips,But meaningfulEvery man should marry. After all, happiness is not the only thing in life.Friendship is love without his wings. (George Gordon Byron, Bdritish poet) There are no accidents..car maintenance prices。！！Tips :Both parents should put the baby down for naps, feed her and change her. The more family resources she has, the more secure she will feel.
Beautiful:

Vintage magazines

Image by Eleventh Earl of Mar
My girlfriend’s parents have an extraordinary collection of almost classic stuff in their attic in Akron, including these old Life and Time magazines – this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Welcome！,This blog is about ask a toddler & educating a baby.
！！Health tips :Make play-time green-time with greener toys，Get back to basics and try old fashioned wooden toys and organic cotton or homemade teddies. Because babies put most things in their mouths,go as natural as possible.
Refinement :

My favorite

Image by Erwss, peace&love
Just for my friends!! and special for Eleni!!
Richard Bach. Jonathan Livingston Seagull

To the real Jonathan Seagull,
who lives within us all.

Part One

It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a
gentle sea. A mile from shore a fishing boat chummed the water. and the
word for Breakfast Flock flashed through the air, till a crowd of a
thousand seagulls came to dodge and fight for bits of food. It was another
busy day beginning.
But way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan
Livingston Seagull was practicing. A hundred feet in the sky he lowered
his webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to hold a painful hard
twisting curve through his wings. The curve meant that he would fly
slowly, and now he slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face, until
the ocean stood still beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in fierce
concentration, held his breath, forced one… single… more… inch…
of… curve… Then his featliers ruffled, he stalled and fell.
Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air
is for them disgrace and it is dishonor.
But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings
again in that trembling hard curve – slowing, slowing, and stalling once
more – was no ordinary bird.
Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of
flight – how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it
is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not
eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else. Jonathan
Livingston Seagull loved to fly.
This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one’s self
popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent
whole days alone, making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting.

He didn’t know why, for instance, but when he flew at altitudes less
than half his wingspan above the water, he could stay in the air longer,
with less effort. His glides ended not with the usual feet-down splash
into the sea, but with a long flat wake as he touched the surface with his
feet tightly streamlined against his body. When he began sliding in to
feet-up landings on the beach, then pacing the length of his slide in the
sand, his parents were very much dismayed indeed.
"Why, Jon, why?" his mother asked. "Why is it so hard to be like the
rest of the flock, Jon? Why can’t you leave low flying to the pelicans,
the alhatross? Why don’t you eat? Son, you’re bone and feathers!"
"I don’t mind being bone and feathers mom. I just want to know what I
can do in the air and what I can’t, that’s all. I just want to know."
"See here Jonathan " said his father not unkindly. "Winter isn’t far
away. Boats will be few and the surface fish will be swimming deep. If you
must study, then study food, and how to get it. This flying business is
all very well, but you can’t eat a glide, you know. Don’t you forget that
the reason you fly is to eat."
Jonathan nodded obediently. For the next few days he tried to behave
like the other gulls; he really tried, screeching and fighting with the
flock around the piers and fishing boats, diving on scraps of fish and
bread. But he couldn’t make it work.
It’s all so pointless, he thought, deliberately dropping a hard-won
anchovy to a hungry old gull chasing him. I could be spending all this
time learning to fly. There’s so much to learn!It wasn’t long before Jonathan Gull was off by himself again, far out
at sea, hungry, happy, learning.
The subject was speed, and in a week’s practice he learned more about
speed than the fastest gull alive.
From a thousand feet, flapping his wings as hard as he could, he
pushed over into a blazing steep dive toward the waves, and learned why
seagulls don’t make blazing steep pewer-dives. In just six seconds he was
moving seventy miles per hour, the speed at which one’s wing goes unstable
on the upstroke.
Time after time it happened. Careful as he was, working at the very
peak of his ability, he lost control at high speed.
Climb to a thousand feet. Full power straight ahead first, then push
over, flapping, to a vertical dive. Then, every time, his left wing
stalled on an upstroke, he’d roll violently left, stall his right wing
recovering, and flick like fire into a wild tumbling spin to the right.
He couldn’t be careful enough on that upstroke. Ten times he tried,
and all ten times, as he passed through seventy miles per hour, he burst
into a churning mass of feathers, out of control, crashing down into the
water.
The key, he thought at last, dripping wet, must be to hold the wings
still at high speeds – to flap up to fifty and then hold the wings still.
From two thousand feet he tried again, rolling into his dive, beak
straight down, wings full out and stable from the moment he passed fifty
miles per hour. It took tremendous strength, but it worked. In ten seconds
he had blurred through ninety miles per hour. Jonathan had set a world
speed record for seagulls!
But victory was short-lived. The instant he began his pullout, the
instant he changed the angle of his wings, he snapped into that same
terrible uncontrolled disaster, and at ninety miles per hour it hit him
like dynamite. Jonathan Seagull exploded in midair and smashed down into a
brickhard sea.
When he came to, it was well after dark, and he floated in moonlight
on the surface of the ocean. His wings were ragged bars of lead, but the
weight of failure was even heavier on his back. He wished, feebly, that
the weight could be just enough to drug him gently down to the bottom, and
end it all.
As he sank low in the water, a strange hollow voice sounded within
him. There’s no way around it. I am a seagull. I am limited by my nature.
If I were meant to learn so much about flying, I’d have charts for brains.
If I were meant to fly at speed, I’d have a falcon’s short wings, and live
on mice instead of fish. My father was right. I must forget this
foolishness. I must fly home to the Flock and be content as I am, as a
poor limited seagull.
The voice faded, and Jonathan agreed. The place for a seagull at
night is on shore, and from this moment forth, he vowed, he would be a
normal gull. It would make everyone happier.
He pushed wearily away from the dark water and flew toward the land,
grateful for what he had learned about work-saving low-altitude flying.
But no, he thought. I am done with the way I was, I am done with
everything I learned. I am a seagull like every other seagull, and I will
fly like one. So he climbed painfully to a hundred feet and flapped his
wings harder, pressing for shore.
He felt better for his decision to be just another one of the Flock.
There would be no ties now to the force that had driven him to learn,
there would be no more challenge and no more failure. And it was pretty,
just to stop thinking, and fly through the dark, toward the lights above
the beach.
Dark! The hollow voice cracked in alarm. Seagulls never fly in the
dark!
Jonathan was not alert to listen. It’s pretty, he thought. The moon
and the lights twinkling on the water, throwing out little beacon-trails
through the night, and all so peaceful and still…
Get down! Seagulls never fly in the dark! If you were meant to fly in
the dark, you’d have the eyes of an owl! You’d have charts for brains!
You’d have a falcon’s short wings!
There in the night, a hundred feet in the air, Jonathan Livingston
Seagull – blinked. His pain, his resolutions, vanished.
Short wings. A falcon’s short wings!
That’s the answer! What a fool I’ve been! All I need is a tiny little
wing, all I need is to fold most of my wings and fly on just the tips
alone! Short wings!
He climbed two thousand feet above the black sea, and without a
moment for thought of failure and death, he brought his forewings tightly
in to his body, left only the narrow swept daggers of his wingtips
extended into the wind, and fell into a vertical dive.
The wind was a monster roar at his head. Seventy miles per hour,
ninety, a hundred and twenty and faster still. The wing-strain now at a
hundred and forty miles per hour wasn’t nearly as hard as it had been
before at seventy, and with the faintest twist of his wingtips he eased
out of the dive and shot above the waves, a gray cannonball under the
moHe closed his eyes to slits against the wind and rejoiced. A hundred
forty miles per hour! And under control! If I dive from five thousand feet
instead of two thousand, I wonder how fast..
His vows of a moment before were forgotten, swept away in that great
swift wind. Yet he felt guiltless, breaking the promises he had made
himself. Such promises are only for the gulls that accept the ordinary.
One who has touched excellence in his learning has no need of that kind of
promise.
By sunup, Jonathan Gull was practicing again. From five thousand feet
the fishing boats were specks in the flat blue water, Breakfast Flock was
a faint cloud of dust motes, circling.
He was alive, trembling ever so slightly with delight, proud that his
fear was under control. Then without ceremony he hugged in his forewings,
extended his short, angled wingtips, and plunged direcfly toward the sea.
By the time he passed four thousand feet he had reached terminal velocity,
the wind was a solid beating wall of sound against which he could move no
faster. He was flying now straight down, at two hundred fourteen miles per
hour. He swallowed, knowing that if his wings unfolded at that speed be’d
be blown into a million tiny shreds of seagull. But the speed was power,
and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty.
He began his pullout at a thousand feet, wingtips thudding and
blurring in that gigatitic wind, the boat and the crowd of gulls tilting
and growing meteor-fast, directly in his path.
He couldn’t stop; he didn’t know yet even how to turn at that speed.
Collision would be instant death.
And so he shut his eyes.
It happened that morning, then, just after sunrise, that Ionathan
Livingston Seagull fired directly through the center of Breakfast Flock,
ticking off two hundred twelve miles per hour, eyes closed, in a great
roaring shriek of wind and feathers. The Gull of Fortune smiled upon him
this once, and no one was killed.
By the time he had pulled his beak straight up into the sky he was
still scorching along at a hundred and sixty miles per hour. When he had
slowed to twenty and stretched his wings again at last, the boat was a
crumb on the sea, four thousand feet below.
His thought was triumph. Terminal velocity! A seagull at two hundred
fourteen miles per hour! It was a breakthrough, the greatest single moment
in the history of the Flock, and in that moment a new age opened for
Jonathan Gull. Flying out to his lonely practice area, folding his wings
for a dive from eight thousand feet, he set himself at once to discover
how to turn.
A single wingtip feather, he found, moved a fraction of an inch,
gives a smooth sweeping curve at tremendous speed. Before he learned this,
however, he found that moving more than one feather at that speed will
spin you like a ritIe ball… and Jonathan had flown the first aerobatics
of any seagull on earth.
He spared no time that day for talk with other gulls, but flew on
past sunset. He discovered the loop, the slow roll, the point roll, the
inverted spin, the gull bunt, the pinwheel.
When Jonathan Seagull joined the Flock on the beach, it was full
night. He was dizzy and terribly tired. Yet in delight he flew a loop to
landing, with a snap roll just before touchdown. When they hear of it, he
thought, of the Breakthrough, they’ll be wild with joy. How much more
there is now to living! Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the
fishing boats, there’s a reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of
ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and
intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!
The years ahead hummed and glowed with promise.
The gulls were flocked into the Council Gathering when he landed, and
apparently had been so flocked for some time. They were, in fact, waiting.
"Jonathan Livingston Seagull! Stand to Center!" The Elder’s words
sounded in a voice of highest ceremony. Stand to Center meant only great
shame or great honor. Stand to Center for Honor was the way the gulls’
foremost leaders were marked. Of course, he thought, the Breakfast Flock
this morning; they saw the Breakthrough! But I want no honors. I have no
wish to be leader. I want only to share what I’ve found, to show those
horizons out ahead for us all. He stepped forward.
"Jonathan Livingston Seagull," said the Elder, "Stand to Center for
Shame in the sight of your fellow gulls!"
It felt like being hit with a board. His knees went weak, his
feathers sagged, there was roaring in his ears. Centered for shame?
Impossible! The Breakthrough! They can’t understand! They’re wrong,
they’re wrong!
"… for his reckless irresponsibility " the solemn voice intoned,
"violating the dignity and tradition of the Gull Family…"
To be centered for shame meant that he would be cast out of gull
society, banished to a solitary life on the Far Cliffs.
"… one day Jonathan Livingston Seagull, you shall learn that
irresponsibility does not pay. Life is the unknown and the unknowable,
except that we are put into this world to eat, to stay alive as long as we
possibly can."
A seagull never speaks back to the Council Flock, but it was
Jonathan’s voice raised. "Irresponsibility? My brothers!" he cried. "Who
is more responsible than a gull who finds and follows a meaning, a higher
purpose for life? For a thousand years we have scrabbled after fish heads,
but now we have a reason to live – to learn, to discover, to be free! Give
me one chance, let me show you what I’ve found…"
The Flock might as well have been stone.
"The Brotherhood is broken," the gulls intoned together, and with one
accord they solemnly closed their ears and turned their backs upon him.
Jonathan Seagull spent the rest of his days alone, but he flew way
out beyond the Far Cliffs. His one sorrow was not solituile, it was that
other gulls refused to believe the glory of flight that awaited them; they
refused to open their eyes and see. He learned more each day. He learned
that a streamlined high-speed dive could bring him to find the rare and
tasty fish that schooled ten feet below the surface of the ocean: he no
longer needed fishing boats and stale bread for survival. He learned to
sleep in the air, setting a course at night across the offshore wind,
covering a hundred miles from sunset to sunrise. With the same inner
control, he flew through heavy sea-fogs and climbed above them into
dazzling clear skies… in the very times when every other gull stood on
the ground, knowing nothing but mist and rain. He learned to ride the high
winds far inland, to dine there on delicate insects.
What he had once hoped for the Flock, he now gained for himself
alone; he learned to fly, and was not sorry for the price that he had
paid. Jonathan Scagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the
reasons that a gull’s life is so short, and with these gone from his
thought, he lived a long fine life indeed.

on.

Some cool parenting Tips images:

About parenting Tips,news book blog: ask a toddler or educating a baby.
！！about parenting Tips tips :Improve your indoor air quality and maintain a healthy household environment
Refinement :

March 2010

Image by Blue Square Thing
1. Back of beyond 348/365, 2. Free, my way 349/365, 3. They still need cleaning… 350/365, 4. Ice 351/365, 5. Can’t see the way forward 352/365, 6. Kite 353/365, 7. Giraffe tongue 354/365, 8. Tip of the tongue 355/365, 9. After parents evening 356/365, 10. Chance of a paddle? 357/365, 11. Grace (not) under pressure 358/365, 12. Arrow 359/365, 13. Drumming up trade 360/365, 14. Swash 361/365, 15. The town steps 362/365, 16. Main block 363/365, 17. Melted Keyboard 364/365, 18. Still 40 365/365, 19. Contented trees 1/365, 20. The Dancing Hall 2/365, 21. The secret garden 3/365, 22. The state I am in 4/365, 23. Another sunny day 5/365, 24. We rule the school 6/365, 25. Funny little frog 7/365, 26. The chalet lines 8/365, 27. Wrapped up in books 10/365, 28. Is it wicked not to care? 9/365, 29. Summerhill 11/365, 30. Walkway 12/365, 31. Flour mill by night 13/365

Welcome！,This blog is about & Newborn Baby Clothes.
The following are not relevant to the content of some parenting Tips,but classicA bird in the hand is worth than two in the bush.An ounce of luck is better than a pound of wisdom. Birth is much, but breeding is more..Empty vessels make the greatest sound.。！！about parenting Tips tips :Socialize your baby early with plenty of play dates, Gymboree or Mommy and Me. If you hate baby-related activities, take her out to lunch with other people once in awhile.
Wonderful parenting Tips:

Processing Step by Step 4

Image by Amanda McNeal Photography
www.amandamcnealphotography.com

Nashville Newborn Photographer
Follow us on Facebook for up to date sneak peeks and processing tips!

This is the potato sack shot. Notice two sets of hands!! Do not attempt this without an assistant or parents that are comfortable.

1. Paint out hands. You can clone stamp as well but I prefer working on a duplicate layer and painting.
2. Spot heal out any blemishes and safety pin that is holding swaddle snug around baby’s neck for support.
3. Adjust red on face and brighten.
4. Adjust curvesof entire image.
5. Smooth baby’s skin and sharpen facial features.
6. Remove lines from flooring and paint backdrop to blend to floor.
7. Sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor:-)

Welcome！,This blog is about & healthy food for children.
The following are not relevant to the content of some parenting Tips,But meaningfulA bully is always a coward.”Work fascinates me.” I can look at it for hours! ” Come what may, heaven won’t fall..Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.。！！about parenting Tips tips :At about six months, babies starts to eat real food. Rice cereal and mushy veggies turn to combinations of fish, meat, eggs, legumes, and vegetables—yep
Refinement :

Fw: Berkeley, United States

Image by 350.org
— On Sun, 10/25/09, Carole Bennett-Simmons wrote:

Dear 350.org,

Thank you for calling for this historic day of worldwide action!

Our Book Club has seven members, old enough to be grandmothers, and we think about the younger generations facing global climate change. We wanted to take action for the 350.org International Day of Climate Awareness Action so we decided to come up with a list of books that would inspire people to change their lives to help with global climate change. We asked our friends to recommend some too. So here are some books that we hope will get people thinking and talking about how to make changes in their own lives, in their communities, and in their countries to bring the carbon dioxide level down to 350. We hope other book clubs and individuals will like the books as much as we did.

Patty, from our book club says: The most
influential book for me way back in the 70s was Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, it was the beginning of the environmental movement then and should still be read today.

Eileen’s from the book club too – My daughter left this book with me before moving to Washington DC and it is really good. Actually I would recommend it for any book club – The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. It is a very hopeful book about the environment.

Lauren, book club member – I recommend The Lazy Environmentalist on a Budget (Save Money, Save Time and Save the Planet) by Josh Dorfman. This is a very practical book with tips on how to do easy small things that help. Because of this book, we turned in our minivan, under the Cash for Clunkers Program, and purchased a Honda Fit – a car that was recommended in this book. We also like it because it was given as a gift by one of our kids who aspires toward more green living herself and is always nudging us
to do so too. This book is right up our alley for it’s immediate practicality – breaking the problem down into small, doable, realistic pieces.

Mary (the book club meets at Mary’s house) –Loved the book Devils Teeth by Susan Casey, a gripping nonfiction account of life on the Farallon Islands just outside the Golden Gate in San Francisco. There, not far from our shore, is a wild world of seabirds, seals and great white sharks, whose power and beauty so close to our homes is miraculous.

Barbara, Mary’s best friend and book club member – recommends Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Just like in the book, our Barbara raises a lot of her own vegetables in her front yard and has happily kept chickens in the city for many years. She also recommends Toxic Loopholes by Craig Collins, coming out in summer 2010. This book explains how polluters get around legal environmental protections. Craig is Barbara’s
husband.

Carole, Mary’s other best friend, says – Another great book our book club read was Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. It was a real education about how wasteful, polluting and unhealthy the American food delivery system is and how we can change it. No more regular hamburger for my family after that book! It’s grass fed, free range from now on.

These next four books came to us from our friends who belong to Green Sangha a local environmental group seeking environmental change through peaceful actions.

The American Earth, 2008. As America and the world grapple with the consequences of global environmental change, writer and activist Bill McKibben gathers the best and most significant American environmental writing from the last two centuries. Edited by Bill McKibben.

In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan. In the book, Pollan postulates that the answer to healthy eating is simply to "Eat food. Not too
much. Mostly plants." Pollan argues that nutritionism as an ideology has overly complicated and harmed American eating habits. He says that rather than focusing on eating nutrients, people should focus on eating the sort of food that their ancestors would recognize.

Farm City, by Novella Carpenter. The desire for a simpler life in the country, filled with the excitement of living like pioneers, spurred Novella Carpenter’s parents to move away from the Bay Area in the 1970s. While their countercultural back-to-the-land experiment ultimately fell apart, the underlying idea persevered, and, in the midst of working on her master’s degree at UC Berkeley, Carpenter decides to dig a garden and start raising turkeys, rabbits and pigs. Only the difference is she’s not farming out in the middle of nowhere; she’s raising food on a vacant lot behind her apartment on 28th Street in Oakland.

The Dream of the Earth, by Thomas Berry. This
classic eco-theological work was first published in 1988. Thomas Berry, one of the leading environmental thinkers in North America, presents a vision based on courtesy and empathy for the earth and all living things. Berry celebrates the human-earth relations pioneered by Native Americans and calls for further steps in the healing of the planet. He believes that churches and universities have a role to play in helping people to see the earth as a living organism and to link evolution and ethics. This can serve as a counterpoint to the "technological trance" that has resulted from an overemphasis upon progress.

Our friend Mike is from the community garden and has been inspired by fiction. Dystopian Theme: Make change or this could be the life of your children or your own life in the near future.
The Road – Cormac McCarthy
Mara and Dan – Doris Lessing
Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood
After the Flood – Margaret
Atwood
Friend of the Earth – T. C. Boyle
Parable of the Sower – Octavia Butler,
take action into your own hands and stop development theme
Monkey Wrench Gang – Edward Abbey
Death in the Andes – Mario Vargas Llosa,
rejection or consequences of the Western exploitation theme
Dream in Polar Fog – Yuri Rytkheu
Tracks – Louise Erdrich

Jeffrey, who rides his bike everywhere and volunteers with our native plant restoration project, recommends – The Heat is On, Ross Gelbspan, of course directly related to climate and Cloning the Buddha, by Richard Heinberg, about genetic engineering

Catherine, who buys organic, plants natives, and travels by train was inspired by:
A Far Country – Daniel Mason
Jack London – Call of the Wild (and other Alaska stories).
Carol j. Adams, ed.- Ecofeminism and the Sacred
Gareth Porter and Janet Welsh Brown – Global Environmental Politics
Greenhaven Press. –
Environmental Justice
Dr. Seuss. – The Lorax
Terry Tempest Williams.- Refuge
Chellis Glendinning, My Name is Chellis and I Am in Recovery from Western Civilization.
Riane Eisler: Sacred Pleasure.

John, from the community garden. is a prolific reader. Here are his favorites:
Walden – Henry David Thoreau
Poetry of Robert Frost
Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman
Cloud Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown – Alan Watts
Turtle Island – Gary Snyder
Desolation Angels – Jack Kerouac
Silent Spring – and – A Sense of Wonder – Rachel Carson
A Sand County Almanac – Aldo Leopold
The Unsettling of America – Wendell Berry
Continuing the Good Life – Scott and Helen Nearing
Small is Beautiful – E.F. Schumacher
Gaia: A New Look at Earth – J.E. Lovelock
Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind – Theodore Roszak
The Closing Circle – Barry Commoner
Ecotopia – Ernest Callenbach
Desert Solitaire – The
Monkey Wrench Gang – Hayduke Lives! – Edward Abbey
Encounters With the Archdruid – John McPhee
Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered – Bill Devall, George Sessions
The Foxfire books
The Man Who Planted Trees – Jean Giono
Animal Vegetable Miracle – Barbara Kingsolver
This Organic Life – Joan Gussow
Omnivore’s Dilemma – Michael Pollan
oh, and can’t forget: The Lorax – Dr Suess
John says if I had to pick, probably Gaia: A New Look at Earth – J.E. Lovelock
opened my eyes to the earth as a living thing more than anything.
The rest reinforced and added to that notion.

Greg, an urban planner, who we met while volunteering on a habitat restoration project, says – Two immediately come to mind that I first read many years ago and have been in my collection ever since. Both concern environmental philosophy, ethics and inspiration rather than contemporary "how to."

A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold, 1949.
Some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau about a land and conservation ethic. In addition to being a renowned scientist, philosopher and teacher he was a talented writer. Leopold was a co-founder of the Wilderness Society. He was mentioned in the recent Ken Burns National Parks documentary on PBS. Following a career with the US Forest Service he was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is credited as the founder of the science of wildlife ecology. The UW established the Department of Game Management, now Wildlife Ecology, (the first of its kind), he was appointed the first chair. Two of his sons were professors at Cal in related fields.

"The Lorax" by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel), 1971. A masterful distillation of the fundamental point of the environmental ethic. It should be on any short list to read to children. My exposure to this book was my very first class as a new student
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After outlining the course program for the semester, the professor sat down at a reading lamp, the hall darkened, and he expressively read this book as the illustrations were projected on a screen. Class ended with sustained applause. I still remember that morning. The course was introduction to ecology.

Irene, our friend from the community garden, says – I highly recommend Peter Matthiessen’s ‘Birds of Heaven’ – about cranes and their environment worldwide – it is wonderful – such a world view – and stunning photos!

Georgia, who we also met at the community garden and who has worked as an urban forester, recommends Reclaiming the Commons, by Donahue and
Suburban Safari, by Holmes.

So there you have it, our list of inspirational books. Book clubs, community gardens, volunteering with others for habitat restoration or environmental letter writing all provide opportunities
to share ideas, concerns, get organized for positive change and have fun building community with others at the same time. Let’s do it!

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