By Micky McKinley
I stood before a classroom of eager fifth graders as I began teaching a group of classes called Energy Investigations. “How come the lights go on?” I asked them. They responded: “Wires.” “The switch.” Someone came close: “Something to do with a power plant.” As the discussion progressed I was reminded again that most fifth graders don’t know where our energy comes from.
By Michael Dover
Thanksgiving has come and gone yet again. The old English harvest festival, which morphed into a celebration of the first New England colony’s survival, later became our first true secular holiday, enshrined by presidential proclamations and eventual federal law. These days a skeptic might be forgiven for failing to see much thanks-giving among the shopping frenzy and football mania that seem to dominate the weekend. And there are those who question celebrating the beginning of the end of Native American sovereignty over their land.
By Elizabeth Farnsworth
The Pioneer Valley is an exhilarating place to be these days, rich in restaurants, eclectic music, boutiques and art museums. But if you think the Five College corridor is a happening place now, you obviously weren’t around during some of its most thrilling times— about 200 million years ago. Really, there was never a dull moment back then, when volcanoes and lava flows were reshaping the earth that now lies under our feet.
By Annie Woodhull
Bees are very small, but they have an enormous effect on the world as we know it. One third of the world’s agricultural production relies on bees. Yet bees have declined precipitously— 60 percent since 1950. This has huge implications for humankind.
By Ted Watt
When I was a kid growing up in the suburbs in Connecticut, the air on weekends in October would be thick with the acrid gray smoke of burning leaves. It was just a part of our world. Leaves were a nuisance, something to be gotten rid of so the green “perfect” lawns wouldn’t look littered. I never liked the smell.
By David Spector
One September day I looked out the window and saw a gray fox walking through my yard, pouncing on the grasshoppers and crickets that it startled. Among the benefits of my infrequent lawn-mowing is that the taller grass and more abundant wildflowers provide food for many interesting insects, including an abundant supply of crickets and grasshoppers. These, in turn, are food for a variety of other animals, including my visitor. As often happens, this observation led me to reflect on something larger: the so-called “balance of nature” and why I don’t find the concept useful.
By Colleen Kelley
Few people would argue these days that we don’t need environmental education. But ask a dozen teachers of the subject what it means and you could get as many different definitions. I’ve been an educator at the Hitchcock Center for the Environment for more than 25 years: presenting programs in schools, training teachers, leading field trips, holding classes for pre-schoolers and home-schooled children, and running an after-school program for kids to play freely outdoors. My experience tells me that an essential part of environmental education is to be outside, to experience the natural world as it actually is, to ask questions and find the answers.
By Jennifer Unkles
It was a hot summer day and Thomas, my 3-year-old, shouted, “Mommy! There’s a Monarch Flutterby!” He saw it before I did, even though I was looking hard. We were near a clover field, which should be a good spot to catch and tag monarchs in September. I had begun to worry about the tagging program I teach and how hard it was last year to find them. Thomas brought me back to the present moment.
By Laura Fitch
I’ve been working as a “green” architect in the Pioneer Valley for 30 years and have had the good fortune to work for many clients interested in green, energy-efficient design. While these projects have helped reduce my clients’ energy footprints, they have done little to change the area’s overall development direction. We lament sprawl while driving everywhere. We’re dismayed by the proliferation of malls and the loss of our local businesses, but our zoning often dictates this type of growth.
By David Spector
I was once afraid of box elder. It was a misplaced fear, as I’ll explain, but it provides a useful example of why we need good environmental education.
Hitchcock Center for the Environment
at Hampshire College
845 West Street | Amherst MA 01002 | 413.256.6006 | 413.253.2809 fax