The Arctic is warming faster than any other place on Earth, leading to numerous changes in the region, most noticeably, a sharp decline in the amount of ice covering the Arctic Ocean. The decrease in ice will have serious consequences for the entire Arctic ecosystem, including plants, animals and the people who live there.

Scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory study the oceanography, ecology, geology and climate of Earth’s polar regions; by understanding the basic processes in these places we can better inform future decisions and policy, and prepare for changing conditions.

Two of these scientists, associate research professor Andy Juhl and postdoctoral fellow Craig Aumack, are conducting fieldwork above the Arctic Circle, near the remote community of Barrow, Alaska. Their work is part of a long-term National Science Foundation funded project to investigate the billions of tiny marine organisms living in and below Arctic sea ice. I’ve joined them to document and tell stories about their research, how it’s done, why and what they’re learning.

The Arctic food web. Our team is studying the primary producers (bottom left), or photosynthesizing ice algae.

Microscopic plants, or sea ice algae, are the focus of their research and are an important part of the Arctic marine food web. During late winter and spring, large communities of these algae flourish, or bloom, inside and on the undersurface of Arctic sea ice. As the ice melts, algae are released into the nutrient rich waters, feeding plankton and higher trophic levels, including fish, whales and seals. The thickness of sea ice and the associated snow cover, as well as the timing of sea ice melt in spring and freeze in autumn, may all affect the productivity of the ice algae community and, consequently, the organisms that feed on them, causing dramatic changes in marine life.

We’re based at the UMIAQ field station in Barrow, which provides logistical support for NSF-funded scientists conducting research in the area. From Barrow, we’ll travel across the sea ice by snowmobile to nearby Point Barrow, where we’ll establish sampling stations and drill and remove cores of ice. Samples will be analyzed back in the lab to investigate the flux of the algal organisms and organic matter from the sea ice to the water column during the spring melt.

Andy and Craig hope to learn how our fast-warming climate and the resulting dissipation of sea ice affect the entire marine food web. This knowledge is essential to assessing the value of the ice community in the Arctic and is paramount to predicting ecosystem wide consequences to rapidly changing Arctic environments.

How has the amount of Arctic sea ice changed? This NOAA video shows the Arctic’s 2012 record-breaking ice loss; follow this blog for more updates from the Arctic May 14-26.

Have you REGISTERED for the CHATTAHOOCHEE HIDDEN GEMS PADDLING TRIP- MAY 18th?

Take a behind the scenes look at the work horse of Atlanta with not only an awe-inspiring presentation about this sections history – but also fascinating presentations on the wildlife that resides here and ways that you can get involved in water quality monitoring and river cleanups in your community.

Where: Chattahoochee River in Southwest Metro Atlanta (The stretch we are paddling is 13.1 miles and has beginner class 1 rapids).
When: Saturday, May 18th ~ 8AM – 5PM
Cost:     
$50 ~ Includes Boat Rental, Lunch, and ACA Insurance ($35 kids- 18 and under)
$25 ~ Includes Lunch and ACA Insurance, Bring your own Boat
$15 ~ Includes ACA Insurance, Bring your own Boat and Lunch

May 18th… It’s gonna be AWESOME!

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR GOOD TIMES…

This post concludes the discussion of my revisions to the classic Buddhist text, The Heart of the Prajanaparamita. You will find the revised text–The Earth Holders’ Heart Sutra–below in Part Two.

Battle-weary activists can let go of personal baggage and the scorecard of environmental wins and losses because scorecards are nonsensical under the shining light of emptiness— the reality that nothing possesses a “separate self,” everything is a continuation of something else, and the universe emerges through “dependent co-arising.” What we perceive as success is actually made of many failures and failures are made of many successes. More significantly, our “battles” are marked with emptiness; in reality (as The Earth Holders’ Heart Sutra says in Part Two), nothing is “produced or destroyed, defiled or immaculate, increasing or decreasing.” We may think we are in a great battle to save Mother Earth, but in reality—despite all effort—we are not transforming the whole; we are mostly battling ourselves.

We can do things differently. As an alternative to traditional environmental advocacy, professional and citizen activists can practice Insight Environmentalism—thinking and acting as an ecosystem for planetary transformation. Insight Environmentalism augments the advocate’s scientific, legal, and community organizing tool kit with the warrior skills of fierce compassion, kindness, and collaboration in present moment action. Like ecosystems, we are always in relationship. Insight Environmentalism honors our relationships, leaving nothing out. It is a planetary campaign to ease the suffering of the whole of Mother Earth— all humans, animals, plants, and minerals.

Don’t misunderstand me. This isn’t starry-eyed stuff. Many will continue to act selfishly; they will object to acting in harmony with the whole. Things are likely to get much worse before they get better. But the warrior skill of fierce compassion includes stopping others from creating harm by using all the non-violent tools at hand, including: civil disobedience, the media, and lawmaking in our democracy.

Opening ourselves to thinking and acting as an ecosystem, we turn to natural systems for guidance on how to become better members of the earth community. Looking, we see ecosystems are energetic and diverse communities operating transparently, without secrets. They are equitable and supremely democratic places governed by nature’s strict laws. Ecosystems adapt and evolve as conditions change. They are self-healing, maintaining balance and correcting for greed, runaway growth, or over consumption. Communication between system parts is perfect, clear. There is no waste; resources cycle and flow freely. Things bloom and fade without struggle or attachment. Tolerance and patience abound; unnecessary competition, aggression, or violence is absent.

To this end, professional and citizen activists, can take Ten Steps Toward Thinking and Acting as an Ecosystem. We can:

1. Practice seeing ourselves in relationship to the whole–our planet body as our body, empty of a separate self.

2. Practice generosity, letting resources flow through our existence without clinging, fear, or attachment.

3. Practice seeking out, opening to and celebrating diversity.

4. Practice living ethically, protecting and respecting all humans, animals, plants, and minerals.

5. Practice tolerance, asking: “Am I sure,” and “Is this really so?”

6. Practice surrendering to not knowing.

7. Practice—without bias—quietly listening to and observing what is real.

8. Practice communicating simply, truthfully, kindly, and clearly.

9. Practice wisdom before taking action, asking: “Is my action beneficial? Is it skillful? Is it the right time?”

10. Practice taking compassionate, kind, and collaborative action.

Insight Environmentalists bring peace and healing first to ourselves and our families, and then move outward in ever-expanding circles of connection. We encourage others to join us in healing the ailing planet by first healing themselves.

In the end, the work of Insight Environmentalism might look similar to past efforts. While easing suffering we will manage fisheries, promote recycling, curb pollution, and object to resource exploitation. What will change is us—individual advocates and the environmental community itself—because in Insight Environmentalism the means becomes the end. Seeking planetary well-being, we will be well. Desirous of an inclusive and non-contentious democracy, we will be inclusive and non-contentious. Wanting to be heard we will listen. Aspiring to curb consumption to protect life, we will curb our own consumption, protect life.

Insight Environmentalism therefore is more than a cause or professional career; it is a lifestyle and a loving path through this mess that is available to all. We will make mistakes. But because the pain in our hearts and minds co-arises with planetary suffering, we will increase our skillfulness when we increase our every-day awareness of emptiness and dependant co-arising.

We are the generation giving shape our continuation. It is up to us to transform the suffering of the whole of Mother Earth with ever more skillful and healing actions.

• 2012    April 30
• 2011    April 12
• 2010    March 17
• 2009    May 8

I walked today (5/13) and still no luck.  It troubles me because 10 years ago my relationship with the park began as an enchantment with chipmunks.

In those early days, there was a man who came late in the afternoon, and walked at a leisurely pace with a bag on his shoulder and tossing its contents onto the ground as he neared a stand of  rhododendrons. When I drew close enough to recognize the peanuts, something else made me gasp, – mind boggling numbers of chipmunks.

They swarmed from beneath the shrubbery, fearlessly, eagerly toward the man with the peanuts, – as if he were the Pied Piper of Hamlin. I was one of many who witnessed this delight. People instinctively hung back and kept quiet, so as not to frighten the animals and spoil the moment.

After a time, the peanut man stopped coming and I never again saw the spectacle, but every year, from spring through fall, I recorded an average of 4-5 chipmunks in the park every day.

I am afraid the Springfield Parks Department’s thoughtless and repeated onslaughts and wanton destruction of living trees and fallen ones under which chipmunks live. They intruded as recently as March - when pregnant females and this year’s young may have been killed by heavy machinery.

Up until 2013, chipmunks could be seen scampering over a pile of logs that protected their burrows. This is what’s left.

A tree does not grow quickly in one day. A tree requires deep, nutritional soil, adequate rain and the warmth of sunlight to slowly grow each day. Year after year it grows with the rings of experience that come with each season. Each year it extends out and forms new branches.

Knowledge is like that. It takes time to acquire knowledge. Knowledge requires deep support and nurturing along with the warmth and openness of others to gain more knowledge each day. Year after year knowledge grows with the experiences of life.

A solitary tree is often an unusual site. Trees are mostly part of a larger forest, growing stronger side by side with branches overlapping and touching.  Just as individual knowledge is touched and connected to other knowledge. Within the forest, a variety of birds and other animals transport seeds, foreign plants and flowers while travelling and jumping across these connecting branches. These are like the exposure to new ideas and co-creation of new knowledge. And sometimes flames of change completely engulf the forest eventually spurring on new growth and new direction, like a knowledge paradigm shift.

This is the ecosystem of nature, and a more creative way to the think of the ecosystem of knowledge mobilization.

(Image from the Sydney Morning Herald website, http://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-makes-list-of-ecosystems-in-bad-shape-20130508-2j7yv.html)

This might just be the “two posts within an hour effect, because I left this assignment to the last minute” but this next article is not overly appealing. And for once, I am hesitant to criticise, because it has the characteristics of a lot of other articles I have chosen to analyse. The article, “Australia makes list of ecosystems in bad shape” by Tom Arup, who is the Environment Editor for The Age, outlines the research by international scientists to create a new system to define ecosystems as endangered, like the system for individual species. In this umbrella definition, individual species will be taken into account as part of a broader community, where, if the ecosystem no longer exists, it is deemed “collapsed” rather than extinct.

In their collection of data, eight of the twenty ecosystems that were endangered came from Australia. I can appreciate taking a wider news problem and concentrating on Australia for proximity and impact, but perhaps the way it is presented is so flat that there can be no engagement with the story.

The story is timely, it follows other news values, like mentioned before, and there is nothing in the style or the language that I can fault. It follows the standard pyramid structure and includes photographs and diagrams for a greater appeal. But perhaps the article does not have a “so what?” factor? In avoidance of sensationalising the news, it has done the opposite, and not emphasised how critical the situation is? It seems that in an effort to mediate between public and expert, the writer has ignored the greater implications and the scientific evidence that the Australian population is not doing enough for the environment. But alas, one must find the balance between sensationalism and audience engagement.

You can find the article here: http://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-makes-list-of-ecosystems-in-bad-shape-20130508-2j7yv.html

Otherwise, though you don’t get much variety – and under some circumstances, that’s fine. But when we start treating animals as generic, there’s a very real loss of ecosystem: though perhaps unremarkable to the sensibilities and assumptions of urban readers, all those quest-inducing  forests, swamps and mountains tend to be either totally devoid of animal life (except for a plethora of conveniently edible rabbits), or else serve as the backdrop for a single, climactic animal attack (usually from a bear or wolves). And with that loss of ecosystem comes a lack of appreciation for animal behaviour: we start to think of animals as creatures whose only meaningful relationships are with humans. That being done, we lose all sense of subtlety  unless they occupy a background role, like pack-mules and hunting dogs, our fantasy animals are overwhelmingly portrayed in a way that skews heavily towards one of two wildly differing extremes. Either we romanticise and anthropomorphise to an alarming degree (faithful, loyal and freakishly sentient dogs or horses, near-magical wolves, noble and mystical stags), or else we demonise, with the creation of wild animals who exist only to menace humans (like ravenous wolves, child-eating lions, and monstrous bears).

So with all this baggage surrounding the presence and portrayal of animals in epic fantasy, what happens when we start building animalistic shapeshifter societies in urban fantasy?

Nothing good, is the short answer. More specifically, we get the Alpha Problem: endless tracts of sexism, misogyny, female exceptionalism, rigid social hierarchies maintained through a combination of violence and biological determinism, inescapable mating bonds, and a carte blanche excuse for male characters to behave like cavemen (and for female characters to accept it) on the slender justification that, as alphas, it’s both in their nature and what’s expected of them. And the thing is, I love urban fantasy, and I also really love shapeshifters. But it’s not often these days that I get to love the two things in combination, because apart from not being able to deal with the sheer profligacy of the aforementioned problems, I also can’t get past the fact that the logic on which they’re predicated – the logic of wolves – is overwhelmingly inaccurate.

For ages now, werewolves have maintained their status as not only the most widely-known, but easily most popular shapeshifters: as far as the Western mythological and folkloric (and thus Western SFFnal) canon is concerned, our concept of werewolves has set the standard for all subsequent depictions of shapeshifters generally – and, not unsurprisingly, our concept of werewolves has been historically influenced by our view of actual wolves. Though traditionally portrayed as sly, ravening monsters who hunt to kill, as enshrined in endless European stories from Little Red Riding Hood to Peter and the Wolf, our perception of wolves – and consequently, of werewolves – has changed drastically in the past few decades, undergoing something of a 360 degree reversal. Thanks in no small part to the superficial affectations of New Age spiritualism and its cherrypicking appropriation of various Native American cultures, such as the concept of spirit animals, our fantastic depictions of wolves began to change. Instead of being described as slavering, child-stealing beasts, they were instead ascribed a spiritual, near-magical status as guardians, wise warriors and compassionate, social predators, which in turn had an impact on werewolf stories. Instead of being little more than monsters in human skin, more nuanced portrayals of werewolves emerged; first in narratives which contrasted their sympathetic humanity with their unsympathetic and uncontrolled bestial natures, and then, finally, in stories where their animal side was shown as a to be a spiritual, even desirable attribute.

Thus: once our general image of wolves had been rehabilitated to the point where we could have positive, social werewolf stories rather than deploying them purely as horror elements, it was only logical that writers look to actual wolf behaviour for inspiration in writing werewolf culture. And what they found was terminology that could easily have been tailor-made for fantasists, with its Greek words and implications of feudal hierarchy: the language of alpha, beta, gamma and omega. The idea of an alpha mating pair lent itself handily to romance, while the idea of wolves battling for supremacy within rigidly defined family structures was practically a ready-made caste system. Writers took to it with a vengeance – and as a consequence, we now find ourselves in a situation where not only werewolves and other shapeshifters, but purely human romantic pairings both within and outside of fiction, are all discussed in the language of alpha and beta. Under this system, alphas are hypermasculine, aggressive, protective leaders, while betas are their more subdued, less assertive underlings. The terminology has becomes so widespread, even beyond fantasy contexts, that most people have probably heard of it; but in urban fantasy in particular, the logic of wolves has long since become a tailor-made justification for the inclusion and defense of alpha male characters. These alphas, who frequently double as love interests, display violent, controlling behaviour that would otherwise read as naked patriarchal wish-fulfillment: instead, their animal aspect is meant to excuse and normalise their aggression, on the grounds – often tacit, but always implied – that real wolves act that way. 

Except that, no: wolves don’t act that way – and what’s more, we’ve known they haven’t for over a decade;  even the alpha-beta terminology of wolf relationships is falling out of scientific parlance due to its inaccuracy. Which means that all the supposedly biologically-inspired logic underpinning those endless alphahole characters and male-only werewolf clans? That logic is bullshit, and has been practically since it was written. So how, then, did it all get started in the first place? The answer is surprisingly simple. Back in 1947, when wolf behaviour was very poorly understood, a man called Rudolph Schenkel published a monorgaph on wolf interactions based on his observations of what happened when totally unrelated wolves from different zoos were all brought together in the same closed environment – which is, of course, something that would never happen in the wild, and which therefore produced aberrant behaviour. This paper was subsequently cited heavily by wolf researcher L. David Mech in his book The Wolf: Ecology and Behaviour of an Endangered Species, which was first published in the 1970s. This being the first such book of its kind to be released for thirty-odd years, The Wolf became a massive success, was reprinted several times over the next two decades, and subsequently became a primary reference for many other researchers. But in the late 1990s, after studying wolves in the wild firsthand, Mech came to realise that the alpha-beta system was inaccurate; instead, wolves simply lived in family groups that formed in much the same way human families do. He published his new results in two papers in 1999 and 2000, and has been working since then to correct the misinformation his first book helped to spread. But of course, the trickle-down process is slow; though the new knowledge is accepted as accurate, the old terminology is still sometimes used by researchers who aren’t up to date.

So: given how long it’s taken the scientific community, Mech included, to cotton on to the truth of wolves, I’m not about to blame fantasy writers for having failed to know better, sooner. I will, however, fault them for using the alpha-beta system as an excuse to craft shapeshifter societies where female shifters are rare and special for no good reason; where women are expected to both love and excuse the aggressive behaviour of men; where punitive hierarchies are aggressively enforced; and where controlling, coercive, stalkerish actions are pardoned because It’s What Women Really Want. The decision to focus on masculine power and to make such societies male-dominated as a matter of biology was a conscious one, and while I’ve still enjoyed some stories whose shapeshifters operate under such parameters, I’ve always resented the parameters themselves. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least five urban fantasy series where female shifters are rare and male aggression rules their communities, but not a single one where the reverse is true, let alone one that’s simply female-dominated. And in a genre that’s renowned for its female protagonists and ostensible female agenda, I dislike the extent to which many of those women are made exceptional, not only by their lack of female associates, friends and family members, but their success within traditionally masculine environments as lone, acceptable women.

Though the truth of wolves wasn’t widely known when many such series were first begun, it’s certainly known now. While there’s certainly still room for a new interpretation of the alpha-beta system for shapeshifters in a purely fictional sense – perhaps one with an actual gender balance, or even (let’s go crazy) female dominance – I’m going to tear my hair out if I see any more new stories where alpha males are allowed to behave like terrible asshat jocks and never have their idiocy questioned Because Magic Biology. Wolves and werewolves will always have a special place in fantasy literature, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question our portrayals of their sentience – or that we can’t reimagine their societies.

Microsoft has won over some high-profile developers this year, attracting new or redesigned apps from YouTube, Hulu, and Foursquare. The company says that the vast majority of the most popular apps on other platforms are available on Windows Phone. Microsoft has even developed Android software that will scan your phone, match the apps available on Windows Phone, and save them to your Microsoft ID to help you switch.

Some have made the case that Microsoft is smart to focus on quality apps over sheer numbers, even as iOS has passed 800,000 apps. Nokia recently resorted to a public campaign in an effort to get Facebook to build Instagram for Windows Phone. But so far, it hasn’t been successful — and the broader campaign to get developers to build for Windows Phone appears to be having similar results.

[Source: The Verge]

These people did a lot of good though, didn’t they? Their images were used to help make ‘ecology’ mainstream and now look.

Their findings are published in Ecology Letters.

Animals often hide as stowaways in the ballast tanks of ships or cling to the hull and, once they arrive at a new port, can drive native species to extinction, wreak havoc on whole ecosystems and impact the fishing and tourism industries. Conservationists and ship engineers are now trying to prevent the next big invasion, but data is lacking.

For the research project, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, the team gathered detailed logs of nearly three million ship voyages in 2007 and 2008.

“Our model combines information such as shipping routes, ship sizes, temperatures and biogeography to come up with local forecasts of invasion probabilities,” stated Professor Bernd Blasius from the University of Oldenburg.

Depending on the particular routes, researchers estimated the probability that a species would survive the trip and establish a population in subsequent ports of call.

“It is called ecological roulette,” said Dr Michael Gastner from the University of Bristol,BBC reports. “The probability of winning from the perspective of the invader is really tiny — but because the number of attempts are now growing with more and bigger ships, you play this roulette so often that you become a likely winner sooner or later.

But there is hope. The team stated that it would make a big difference if ship engineers could prevent at least some potential invaders from latching on by removing a species from 25 per cent of the ballast tanks arriving at each port, the overall invasion probability falls by 56 per cent, because the effect of ballast water treatment multiplies at successive stopovers.

To grasp the uncertainties of bioinvasion, the researchers simulated various different scenarios, all of which predicted the same hotspots and global highways.

“Ship movements in the past few years are well documented, but there are many unknown [facts] about future trade routes,” Dr Gastner, Lecturer in Engineering Mathematics at the University of Bristol, added.

This is true when we look at Arctic passages, which thanks to global warming may become navigable for the first time in recent history. Future simulations will also have to take this into account as well as which engineering solutions for ballast water treatment will eventually be taken on by port authorities.

Source: fis.com

Recently, I’ve been doing some workshops with airlines executives.  Sure their business has some unique challenges… but despite their protests to the contrary, they face the same 3 critical questions that underlie any sustainable, and profitable, business model:

1. How is value being created (and by its corollary, destroyed)?
2. How do you capture / enable that value – profitably?
3. How do you sustain it – at scale?

What I find striking is the ‘same old / same old’ patterns and investment focus they share with other many other industries.  Nowhere is this more apparent than the focus on customer experience. 

As is well known, significant pressure exists in the <note: fill in your favorite industry here> airline industry for sustaining & extending profitability.  Becoming *the* brand of extraordinary service is considered by many *an* important mechanism to reduce some of that pressure.  Figuring out how to deliver such service – doing more with less, faster – has become a hot topic.

I get that.  

But the ‘me too / me too’ methods being used to figure out what to do is going down the wrong path.  Changing the path requires re-casting specific challenges that folks are attempting to tackle through the lenses of the 3 questions above.  The rest of this post suggests how, sharing specific observations from these airline discussions that I believe have general implications for executives in other industries.

We all well know that profitability challenges in the airlines industry exist.  We also well know that, as in any industry, geographical & environmental differences exist in terms of growth opportunities and consequently frame what needs to be done to increase the likelihood of uptake and sustained impact.  Despite these differences, nearly every airline is asking the same set of questions: what is the passenger of the future, how do I create extra-ordinary customer experience, how do I radically reduce my cost base, how do I do more with less, faster, how do I diversify my revenue base, how do I monetize (*that* word again) my data more effectively to get greater insight into my customers, how do I respond to shifts in global demand toward so-called new growth markets, how do I deal with the proliferation of products to meet fragmenting customer demand, how do I deal with the growing scarcity of talent needed to support different types of customer experience, and so on.  These questions have become the common set of questions critical to support airline transformation (don’t trust me, look at just about any business strategy document from any airlines, or analyst report on what it is airlines need to do). 

These are all fine operationally-oriented questions that need to be answered. 

At some point.

But they are not *the* core strategic questions; they are insufficient, without context of the 3 critical questions of how value is being created (and destroyed), enabled and sustained.  They, therefore, miss the unique “here and now” opportunities that a number of airline (and, hmmm other industry) leaders recognize being critical to break out of the Race to Zero that so many them face. 

So, let’s turn these typical – operational – questions around.  Let’s not start with the question: what is it that we airline executives can do to enhance the passenger experience (more profitably).  That very question is too frequently asked from an ‘insight-out’ (an airline) perspective.  (Aside: despite the protests that customer journey maps – one of the ‘hot techniques’ of the day – help to articulate ‘experience’ from an outside-in (customer’s) perspective, they seldom do.  After all, one’s ‘experience’ while flying, even from a traditional end-2-end perspective (from booking to destination) remains partial, often ignoring the “reasons why” people fly (or frankly, use products from any industry).   So, a simple step might be simply to extend our focus on experience (or, at least our typical characterization of it) to look at the reasons why folks fly – e.g., what is it that they need to get done. This shift in focus might help break out of the ‘me too-ism’ frequently followed.)

Instead,, let’s start with two simple questions: what is an airline for?  What does it “afford’ folks to do? 

Asking these questions takes us straight to the heart of the “reasons why” folks fly (or consume any products) and changes how we characterize customer’s experience, and consequently, begins to suggest how to answer the 3 questions of how value is (being) created / shifting, how do we enable it (e.g., how do more of what we do now and/or extend into new parts of the value chain) and how do we sustain it (e.g., including how we use analytic services as one of the new foundations *for* value).

So…

… what *is* an airline for?  What *does* if afford folks to do? 

Well, an airline is a vehicle *to do something* – including:

1. Facilitate business
2. Expediently meet a crisis (e.g., an illness in a family, humanitarian relief…)
3. Deepen infrastructure capabilities (e.g., think of the ‘aeropolis’ / business ecosystem that it supports – think Fed-ex’s impact on Memphis for short-hand)
4. Expand reach & connectivity (e.g., whether through expanding access to / from new markets, or wooing folks who used competitive products to use yours, or converting folks who never consumed your products to begin doing so – a topic for another time)
5. Enable a memorable experience (e.g., helping folks get to different places)
6. Concentrate specialized capital for use (e.g., for the airlines, specialized logistics knowledge that creates ‘knowledge spill-over’ and/or has ‘ripple-effects’ throughout the local economy where they are concentrated)
7. Serve as a “hub” for regional economic development (e.g., being part of a regional infrastructure with other logistics providers: ports, cargo, rail, trucks and adjacent services).

So what?

Each of these “things” that an airline affords has its own set of activities, stakeholders and assets that make it successful.  Each, then, carries with it requirements of what creates an effective experience – some of which an airline (today) supports and tomorrow, potentially could.  Exploring the implications of each of these affordances sheds light on each of the operational questions – ‘stress-testing’ them against the 3 critical questions.  It certainly starts to get one to start racing a different race from that of the ‘me too / me too’ race.  The relevance of this for banking is immediate, and direct… a topic for another time.

Last year’s drought took its toll… but this shrub made it without being watered once. Go Natives!

The ilex, recovering from the drought

Wild Geranium

Black Haw Viburnum’s first year in bloom

I thought my spuds died with the rain. Mazel Tov, spuds!

The Paw Paw whips finally leafing out after last year’s drought

Red Buckeye, doing her thant

It just keeps coming!

Black Cherry in bloom…

Everywhere… but kinda cute

Darn, this is an amazing shrub for deep shade. Like a spot-light in the dark!

It is once again Fertilizer Friday at Tootsie Time, where gardeners from all over the world get to flaunt a week’s worth of garden progress.  Clikkity Clikkity on the link, folks, for a look-see at some of the most beautiful gardens around the world!  Mine included!

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/opinion/save-the-wolves-of-isle-royale-national-park.html?ref=global&_r=0

As you read it, think about our local environment: what human-made changes are  bad for the overall environment? How can we help mitigate those changes? Will those further changes have unforeseen consequences?

And now for the close-up: it’s still raining, and here’s a picture of Viburnum trilobum (native cranberrybush viburnum) just coming into bloom.This shrub is right outside our back door:

Notice the outer ring of showy florets, which are sterile and just there for visual attraction (attraction for pollinators, not for us). The inner, fertile flowers will be tiny and fuzzy when they open, and they will have a light, subtle fragrance. The plant will attract pollinators by the score when it’s in bloom a few days from now. Those insects will in turn attract birds, seeking to feed their hungry nestlings; in the winter, more birds will eat the bright-red fruit. Contrast this in your mind with a showy nonnative viburnum, such as a Korean spicebush or an old-fashioned doublefile viburnum–you know, the kind you can buy in any garden center. The nonnative plant will be much showier, but it will not play a useful role in the ecosystem–those gorgeous, extremely fragrant flowers will not attract pollinators, and there will be no berries to feed the birds in winter.

Now think again about the NY Times op-ed piece and about the choice the scientists must make about wolves in Isle Royale National Park. On a very small scale, this is the choice you make every time you select a new shrub or decide how to care for your lawn. What will the consequences be? We don’t always know–in fact, we rarely do. But it’s important always to realize that there are consequences. It all adds up to the big picture.

Update on my herb garden: Critters have devoured every single parsley, dill, and chervil plant and most of the salad burnet. They are also eating the flower buds off downy phlox and the new shoots of most of my asters. What our local ecosystem needs is more carnivores!

We were led to places and first asked what we saw—meaning, that we should produce nouns.  “What kind of tree is that?”  “What do you see over there?”  Then we were asked for verbs.  How is this place changing?  How did it become like this.  Our guide would point us to clues and start weaving together a narrative history of the land’s use, the complex “succession” pattern and indicators of prior disruptions that altered the pattern.  We looked at how the energy of each site was moving, in the sense of growth and decomposition.  We looked at the relationships between organisms, symbiotic and not.  We talked about the “topography” and the “substrate.”  We talked about which places where stronger, in the resilient sense of being more able to withstand disruptions and thrive.  And which ones were more vulnerable. I was really impressed with peoples’ insights into what was happening, and in their ability to leave the woods and keep thinking in the ways encouraged on our walk.

The same reverse-in-time, forensic look can be turned forward.  “What if we….?”  It helps you play out implications of actions, even disruptive ones.  Overall, the goal was to get beyond industrial and machine logic (appropriate to discrete times, places, processes) and think about organisms (and organizations:  they are alive!) as they relate to everything within a larger ecosystem.  We practiced taking multiple, other vantage points.  All of it made us take a much longer view of things.  We talked about the importance of diversity to resilience, about structure and authority and a bit about empowerment, about how what our attention is drawn to may not be what is most important about what’s happening, about our own habits for paying attention overall, and more.

By way of context, we talked about the executive demand to be looking at the organization from the outside in, and the leaders imperative to have a vision of what’s possible from the inside out—something to be held in tension with a clear-eyed look at the current reality. 

It wasn’t just any walk in the woods.  It was a wonderful way to explore the big questions that I like to pose to executives:  What can you see?  And, what are you paying attention to?  Where are you looking from?  For executives, it means grappling with the rich complexity of their surround, which is necessary is there is hope of finding simplifying wisdom for action.

Mammouth Cave is without a doubt the biggest cave in the world, covering 73,000 acres and 400 miles of underground territory. That figure may grow as cave explorers continue to map and explore to find the end of this massive underground water-formed labyrinth. The cave isn’t the only mammoth thing, the cave cricket above is from two to three inches in length. It doesn’t make sounds like our above ground crickets.

We arrived at the visitors center one hour before our reservation. That hour was nicely filled by a film and the displays. Because of my difficulty to do stairs, we signed on for a short tour that only has 12 steps and an optional 98. The tours are many and varied; you will have a lot of choices.  Mammouth has tours for every adventurous spirit. I took pictures of one of the films figuring it would have much we will not see on our tour, such as this altar rock.

When the cave was in private hands, people were invited to get married in the cave along with their guests.

Through a hole in the limestone roof, water cascades into the cave from a sinkhole above that captures water during heavy rains.

The cave system was occupied by various indigenous people at least 7,000 years ago. Their rush torches undecayed on a rock; evidence of their fires at the bottom of the cave from the discovery  entrance. While we don’t know much about current cave mappers/explorers, we do know a bit about the old timers.

Stephen Bishop, a self-educated enslaved person became a legendary guide and explorer. He began guiding visitors at the age of 17 in 1838. He was the first to get by the daunting “deep hole” and opened up many miles of the cave. (Not pictured.)

An amateur explorer, Floyd Collins, died in the cave in 1925, trapped under a boulder in a sand cave. No one was able to rescue him. Sensational news coverage spurred the government to make it a National Park in 1926.

From an original seven miles of cave, Mammouth has grown, and grown. In 1993, it was a 370 mile cave. The current mappers/explorers continue to push deeper and deeper into unknown areas, often crawling like ants in a tube to discover new “rooms”. The explorer above has an inflated roof to keep water from dropping on him and his stuff while he sleeps and eats.

The film had photos of several different types of bats in the cave. These are only as big as your thumb.

Caves are losing millions of their bats to a disease called white nose. It started in the East and is moving west. It has reached Mammouth in a part of the cave where no visitors travel. So, they figure the disease was brought in by the bats. But, as a precaution, you walk across a haz-mat to clean your shoes when leaving the cave, and they ask you to clean before you enter if you’ve visited a cave or a mine within the last five years.  It is a critical disease probably brought from another country on someones feet.

We know we won’t be going on the underground river tour, but isn’t that an exciting idea?  I swam across an underground river in a cave,  hanging onto a rope,  in Cave City located in Mountain Ranch in  Calaveras County, CA. where I live. It was an amazing experience.

A plant that grows in the cave. The connection to the outside, bats, birds, insects, fish, salamanders, all play their part in this unique eco-system. Fascinating.

This colorful fall of eroded limestone is golden and beautiful. I’ll post my own pictures from the cave tomorrow, since we have washday and other chores today. I’m bummed because early in the tour, a drop of liquid fell on my head, and, unbeknownst to me, one drop hit my camera lens. Most of my pictures are smudged. Lighting is such and the ability to learn quickly how to take photos in a dark cave, means my pictures are disappointing.  In this little tour, you don’t find the fans and the bacon and multiple colors I’ve seen in other caves. A woman on the tour complained, “Carlsbad is much prettier. I wasn’t impressed with this cave.”  Considering how little she saw of Mammouth, I feel lucky to be here, at this point in time, in a cave of great significance and renown the world over. Millions of people go through this park every year and find beauty here, as we did.

More than two years after the incident at Fukushima, people are still facing the danger of a radiation apocalypse. It is not only the Western Seaboard of North America that is facing frequent threats regularly but the entire Northern Hemisphere which is gradually being threatened. Senator Wyden had already warned the entire nation of the crisis that may develop as an aftermath of this incident when he personally witnessed the Daiichi nuclear power facility in a wrecked state, littered with huge collection of nuclear fuel rods that could spell slow danger to the environment of the entire planet. No one has paid attention to his outcry.

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http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/8/4314026/microsoft-reportedly-trying-to-buy-nook-ebook-ecosystem-for-1-billion