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to attend our wonderful Fall Programs. Open to all. Bring your friends and
family. Friday, September 19, Joe Bell, local attorney and long-time member of the Sierra Nevada
Group will present a slide show OUT IN AFRICA - LIFE, CULTURE AND
PHOTO SAFARIS 30 YEARS LATER.
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Joseph Bell was a Peace Corps
volunteer who taught elementary school in rural northern Ethiopia, 1969-71. He visited
east Africa twice during those years, on photo safaris to the game parks, a climb of Mt.
Kilimanjaro, and backpacking travel through Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, including
Zanzibar. He re-visited Ethiopia in 1995. This year he returned to Kenya, Tanzania and
Zanzibar, and visited Zambia and South Africa for the first time. He has prepared a
slideshow of the best of hundreds of pictures taken from Capetown driving across South
Africa on the "Garden Route" to Shamwari Game Reserve near Port Elizabeth, and
from an ultra light flight over Victoria Falls to the natural wonders of Ngorongoro
Crater, the Serrengeti, Oldepai Gorge and Zanzibar, in Tanzania. His trip concluded with a
bus ride from Tanzania to Nairobi. He directly experienced township life after apartheid,
toured a Masai village, and saw the tumultuous social conditions on the heals of a
disputed Kenyan presidential election, at the same time the American presidential election
began to make headlines in Africa. |
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Friday, October 17, Dan Tajbl
will speak on Alternative and Renewable Fuels.
After decades of periodic energy crises, failed energy
policies, the increasing plausibility of “peak oil” and $140 per barrel crude,
it appears that the United States may finally be facing up to its significant energy
challenges for the future. The centerpiece of the solution to our transportation energy
needs once again is alternative fuels, preferably from renewable sources - mainly crops -
that do not increase greenhouse gas emissions. This will not be easy, in spite of what you
may be hearing on the presidential campaign trail. We’ve been down this path before
and have not followed through. Corn ethanol, the first such fuel to gain significant use,
has turned out to be a controversial choice. Why? What other alternatives look promising?
How should we be analyzing new technologies so that we don’t repeat the corn ethanol
mistakes? How has Big Auto contributed to the problem? Can we ever be energy independent
in a new world economy where energy supply is aggressively sought by emerging nations such
as China and India? There are many questions about energy facing us in the years to come.
Can we solve this national problem correctly?
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Dan
Tajbl, a retired chemical engineer living in Auburn, will discuss alternative and
renewable fuels from an understandable scientific approach, cutting through the hype and
getting down to facts. We will look at our existing fuel infrastructure and how these new
fuels may change what and how we drive. Dan holds a doctorate in chemical engineering and
has worked for many years in the petroleum refining industry. |
During our October meeting there will be the opportunity
for short introductions by candidates for office in the November general election.
Friday, November 21.
In 2007 our Sierra Nevada Group was awarded the prestigious
Denny and Ida Wilcher Award, a Sierra Club national award. The award was to the SNG
"For its fundraising efforts on behalf of the Clair Tappaan Lodge." (for
our 2nd annual fundraiser in 2006). The award was accompanied by $3,000, which we
have used to further environmental education outreach to youth in our area. Two
projects organized by SYRCL and SYNERGIA used these funds and each will make a
presentation during our November meeting.
(1) SYRCL SYRCL staff along with
volunteers from the community guided 12 students on a short, focused field project that
providing place-based learning as well as training for leadership roles within their
community during the summer of 2008. These students took part in an applied science
curriculum of ecological assessment and experiential education set in the natural,
pristine beauty of Donner Summit, the headwaters for the South Yuba and North Fork
American Rivers. The students spent the first night of the program at Clair Tappaan Lodge
on Donner Summit. During their time staying at Clair Tappaan, Hank Meals, a local
historian, led the group on a hike up Mount Judah and Mount Lincoln and discussed the
various watersheds as well as the history of indigenous people and European settlers who
traversed Donner Summit. Students also participated in a discussion of land-use
principles. Students from this program served as site leaders for SYRCL's Great Yuba
Clean-Up on September 20th, an event that annually draws over 300 volunteers to dozens of
sites throughout the watershed. Youth participants were selected from both the
"downstream" communities in western Nevada County, as well as the
"headwaters" communities around Donner Summit. This trans-regional approach
serves as a bridge between the headwaters community and those from the lower watershed and
gives the project participants and their community volunteers a broad perspective on their
role as environmental stewards.
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(2) Synergia Learning Ventures leads
students on a filmmaking adventure to help save Clair Tappaan Lodge. Last summer, a group
of student filmmakers stayed at Clair Tappaan Lodge, getting a sense for the place, and
shooting footage for a short documentary film about the Lodge, its history and its
contemporary value to the public. They filmed and interviewed guests, staff, and program
directors; they took photographs of the pristine surroundings and the rustic, beautiful
building. They talked to people who were there for the first time, and those who had been
coming there for almost half a century. What they came away with is a beautiful story of a
piece of Sierra history and heritage. The Clair Tappaan story has been crafted into a
short film that will be used to help spread the word about Clair Tappaan so that others
may use the lodge and therefore keep it alive and thriving. Come join the student
filmmakers and their mentors, Debra and Tom Weistar, for the premiere showing of the Clair
Tappaan film!
Sierra Nevada Group annual awards will be presented
during our November meeting. |
