Etching of the night-Night Sky

Etching of the day-Saving the Salmon

Here is an article out of today's San Francisco Chronicle, efforts to save the salmon may hurt farmers. But help restore the salmon population.

Water pressure: By Kelly Zito :CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER

More than a half century after a colossal federal dam built outside Fresno transformed 64 miles of the San Joaquin River into a dusty trench and annihilated native salmon populations, engineers will open the floodgates to begin a new era for California’s second-longest river.

Beginning today, operators will release small pulses of water from Friant Dam with an eye toward “rewetting” the parched riverbed and ultimately reintroducing salmon species beginning next year.

Sizable, year-round flows will not push water through the entire length of the 150-mile stretch of the river between the dam and its union with the Merced River until 2014.

Changes in the dam’s operations are the first visible signs of a historic river restoration settlement between environmentalist and fishing groups, the federal government and agricultural interests.

But the initial flows also highlight the contradictory pressures facing dams in modern California.

While this week brought a tentative agreement to remove four dams along the Klamath River in far northern California and southern Oregon to revive key salmon runs, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has made it clear that a pending overhaul of the state’s deteriorating water system will gain his signature only if it includes major new dam and reservoir projects.

Many involved in the protracted fight to restore the San Joaquin River say today’s action represents a rare instance of sacrifice, cooperation and success.

“This is truly momentous,” said Monty Schmitt, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“When you look at the backdrop of water resource conflicts happening throughout the West, there are very few examples of problems being solved. No one got exactly what they wanted in this, b ut we’ve settled this and we’re getting water in the river. That’s huge.”

The legal battle to revive the San Joaquin River, which carves a crescent-shaped, south-north route from the foothills east of Fresno to the sprawling Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta east of the Bay Area, dates back to 1988.

That year, the Natural Resources Defense Council and environmental groups sued the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and other federal agencies to prevent them from renewing long-term water contracts with Friant-area irrigation districts that would have continued to siphon virtually all of the water from San Joaquin.

When Friant Dam was built in the 1940s to provide water to about 1 million acres of farmland, it slashed flows to a seasonal trickle and some experts came to describe the river as little more than an agricultural drainage ditch. Once-plentiful salmon runs — old timers told of scooping fish from the rivers to use as hog feed — disappeared by the early 1950s.

Nearly two decades after the legal wrangling began, in 2006, a federal judge sided with the environmental and fishing groups, ordering the reinstatement of flows and salmon. This past March, Congress gave the project a financial boost by approving $400 million for the river as part of a landmark wilderness bill. An additional $200 million will come from previously approved California bonds.

Funds will pay for studying water flows and temperatures, fixing damaged canals, deepening of too-shallow channels and adding fish ladders.

As it stands, the San Joaquin flows for 38 miles past Friant Dam, where it is gradually funneled into cropland by those with rights to pull water directly from the river. At that point, however, the riverbed turns into a sandy furrow for 24 miles. It flows again near the Mendota Pool, where it meets up with the federally constructed canal that moves water from the delta to the Central Valley. Past Sack Dam a short way downriver, the San Joaquin again runs dry for about 40 miles until it converges with the Merced River and its tributaries.

Wildlife biologists who lament the loss of a robust river system teeming with fish and waterfowl welcome the effort to re-establish one, continuous river flow to the Pacific Ocean.

For the 15,000 farmers served by the river and Millerton Lake behind Friant Dam, however, the 18 percent or so reduction in their water supplies couldn’t come at a worse time. Drought, environmental restrictions on water exports from the delta and a floundering economy have forced many Central Valley farmers to fallow acreage or pump water from underground. Pumping too much water from wells carries significant risks: It can push water levels below the reach of wells and cause land subsidence.

“This isn’t going to be catastrophic, but farmers are going to pump, pump, pump groundwater,” said Randy McFarland, spokesman for the Friant Water Users Authority, which represents the region’s farmers. “In a sense, that’s going to defeat the purpose of the project because the dam was built originally because farmers were depleting groundwater in the 1920s.”

E-mail Kelly Zito at kzito@sfchronicle.com.

The Etching of the day-Water

[Water.org] Co-founded by Matt Damon and Gary White, Water.org is a nonprofit organization that has transformed hundreds of communities in Africa, South Asia, and Central America by providing access to safe water and sanitation.

Water.org Vision: the day when everyone in the world can take a safe drink of water.

Read more about the mission Matt Damon is on, to ensure that everyone in the world can take a safe drink of water, in the October 2009 issue of Esquire Magazine. The article,

Matt Damon: The Celebrity Shall Save You, written by By Luke Dittrich, is posted at Esquire.com

Also, learn more at http://water.org/

The Etching of the day-Our Values

"These are not ordinary times", I read this in an article a couple of days ago and it has stuck with me. The spokesperson said, "ordinarily we would not do this (whatever it was), however these are not ordinary times." How true! How liberating. Indeed these are not ordinary times. If there was ever a time to step up and take chances, this period of time in our world qualifies.

I set up this blog for many reasons, but partly because it is not an ordinary time for me. I have been on a path of study, research and looking for a new job. I have watched California's unemployment rate go up and down, but like a failed diet, more up than down. As of this writing the unemployment rate sits at 12.2%.

As I research jobs and companies, I look for the companies VISION, MISSION, VALUES statement. I've been inspired by that process and it nurtures, sometimes, my own vision, mission and values. This is a recent statement I copied and pasted,

VISION, MISSION, VALUES
Our Vision: Our vision is to enable free-flowing communications between people, inclusive of differences in abilities, languages, or locations.
Our Mission: Our mission is to enable communications that positively impact our deaf, deaf blind, hard of hearing, and hearing customers every day. We enable these communications through intimate customer knowledge, high-quality professional services, advanced technology, and the passion and commitment of our employees.
Our Values: Own It. Take the initiative. Create and seize opportunities. Lead. Be accountable.

:)

The etching of the day-The Sky is the Limit

California’s Unemployment Rate Increases To 12.2 Percent

Note: EDD’s Unemployment Insurance (UI) telephone lines are open Saturdays
from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. for claim filing and assistance. For convenience, select
EDD Workforce Services offices also are open Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
to provide access to computers and phones for claim filing and assistance.
Check EDD’s Web site (www.edd.ca.gov) for a list of these offices.

California’s Unemployment Rate Increases To 12.2 Percent

SACRAMENTO – California’s unemployment rate was 12.2 percent in
August, and nonfarm payroll jobs declined by 12,300 during the month,
according to data released today by the California Employment Development
Department (EDD) from two separate surveys.
The U.S. unemployment rate also increased in August, rising to 9.7 percent.
In July, the state’s unemployment rate was 11.9 percent, and in August 2008, the
unemployment rate was 7.6 percent. The unemployment rate is derived from a
federal survey of 5,500 California households

The power to begin again, to retool, to re-invent ourselves.

To whom it may concern: I wanted to share this article with you on this Sunday afternoon. Since I won't make it to church today, I was looking around online for a glimpse of inspiration and spiritual nourishment, and I found it in this article written by Dr. Penny Nixon the former senior pastor at MCCSF in San Francisco where I attend church. Dr Nixon wrote this letter for Easter, however the message is just as relevant for today as it is for tomorrow and will be forever. I hope as you read it you feel as connected to it's truths as I did when I read it for the first time.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

In case you hadn't seen it yet, here's a piece I wrote about resurrection that was published in the San Mateo County Times:
Resurrection for All of Us


Last year’s resurrection won’t work for this year’s Easter. I’m not sure when the expiration date was, but all I know is that it lost its potency somewhere along the way. Today it is all too easy to look around us and lose sight of the Easter message of hope and renewal.

The “first” Easter didn’t happen in a historical vacuum. It wasn’t some Hallmark moment in a manicured garden with birds singing and rabbits cocking their heads. It happened in the midst of sorrow, despair and loss. The women who came to visit the tomb were not enveloped in a beatific glow. They came with swollen eyes and tired bodies, a visage of grief. The crosses were still casting their shadows in the background. Good Friday was a mere 36 hours behind them.

Today it still feels like a Good Friday world, where goodness is often crucified, and where violence has become our default solution. Many in our own community feel unsure about the future. Others worry endlessly whether they will be able to put food on the table and whether their rent or mortgage check will bounce. Still others wake up every day wondering whether they will be handed a pink slip. And many, particularly the uninsured and under-insured, live in anxiety that the next illness in their family will plunge them into unrelenting debt.

As people living in this nation, our economic security and sense of identity have been shaken profoundly. This is not news to anyone reading this. But the enduring message of Easter is that there is life beyond Good Friday.

So why has last year’s resurrection date expired? Because I have lost my faith? No. I do not doubt the power of resurrection that many Christians believed happened 2000 years ago. I am simply suggesting that if resurrection—that ability to rise from the ashes and live again—is not happening in our own life and community, then it is not yet real. The nature of resurrection is that it doesn’t just happen once, but again and again.

And do we ever need it this year.

The power to begin again, to retool, to re-invent ourselves. Resurrection is the greatest stimulus package imaginable. The power to become not who we were, but more than who we were. The ability to rise from the ashes and leave behind those aspects of ourselves that put us in disharmony with one another and with our brothers and sisters across the world.

How does it happen? We imagine it together. It happens in communities, all kinds of them. We stop thinking of ourselves first and concentrate on our interdependence. We break through the shackles of race, class and gender by intentionally crossing boundaries and working together to truly help each other. We practice acts of kindness and are the first to give the other the benefit of the doubt. We stop blaming and get to work. We are honest enough to admit that the old system just doesn’t work anymore, and we are brave enough to embrace new possibilities of a way forward. We refuse the easy out of cynicism and become champions of hope even when things look bleak. We believe that even the smallest act can make a difference.

Remember, resurrection happened in the dark of night, and then the dawn came. And, the new resurrection happening this year—it is for everyone. It doesn’t matter what tradition you’re from. Every faith tradition celebrates some concept of resurrection. It doesn’t matter what you call it. Call it spring. Call it renewal. Just be part of the new life, the new way trying to spring up like grass through the cement of our past. If we can imagine it, we can create it. So this Easter I am imagining resurrection—for all of us.


Rev. Dr. G. Penny Nixon
Senior Minister, Congregational Church of San Mateo