Tag: Betsy McCully

Chapter 10 – Weathering Response

This chapter was the perfect way to end the book, in my opinion. Because in the end, everything gets old, wears down, and disappears. We saw it happen with great grassy plains becoming urban centers and forests and marshes being cut down and drained. This, however, is different, because nature is wearing itself out too.

There’s that little thing called global warming. People have been ignoring the melting poles and the starving animals there who struggle in an environment that’s changing too quickly for them to even have a chance of adapting. Temperatures have risen and the melting ice has contributed to sea levels rising. This is some pretty scary stuff happening. Just think of how the sea erodes our beaches when there are storms. It can be dangerous.

No matter how many levees we build or sand walls we pile up on our shores, nature will always overpower it. McCully gave us an example of that island that literally disappeared, totally got swallowed by the sea. I feel like that’s what the end of the world will be like – nature taking back what’s rightfully theirs. It’s as inevitable as anything I’v ever seen. And we kind of deserve it. We build houses on cliffs and beaches without really thinking that not everything is our playground.

Chapter 6 – Muddied Waters – Response

McCully did a pretty good job telling us how much literal crap is dumped into our waterways with this chapter. I feel like this topic, more than the other chapters, is one most of us can relate to. We’ve all spent time by the piers or the beaches so we have seen firsthand how disgusting the water can get because of factories dumping random things into it and people also just throwing things in willy-nilly. It’s hard to imagine it being so bad in the 1920’s that Manhattan was called “a body of land entirely surrounded by sewage.”

This might have to do with how most people think water just washes things away; that if they dump their waste into the water without treating it, it will just go away and not be their problem anymore. As McCully shows us though, this is not the case. We are all hurt by what happens to the water. One of her examples was the nuclear plant in Buchanan, NY which killed millions of fish that got caught in the overheated water in their turbines (88). One accident wiped out millions of living creatures. That’s pretty intense.

Another thing she mentioned was PCB’s and how they infect the fish in the water, fish people eat. Then if these fish are eaten by pregnant women or kids, those people can get sick (90). We depend on the water for so many things, so that by destroying it as a clean source, we slowly destroy ourselves. Yet we’ve been doing just that. We over-harvested oysters, destroyed marshes by draining them, changed the salinity of ecosystems. The latter being especially bad when we increased it and hurt organisms that needed lower levels to survive (93).

Chapter 7 – Footprints – Response

In this chapter, McCully discusses the grasslands and fields that used to make up parts of New York. She mentions Mitchel Field on the Hempstead Plains of Long Island which was utilized during wartime as an Air Force Base. She also talked about how the Plains are full of plants on the endangered, threatened, and vulnerable species list. Yet, like with the base, a lot of the Plains were used for our own human activities. Who knows what happened to those plants? Or if the reason they’re like that now is because of us?

Not to mention all the invasive species that have found their way to our country or the ones that were deliberately planted to get a certain environment. Settlers planted Kentucky bluegrass and clover because they knew that they’d be good forage crops. These crops then spread like crazy throughout our country. It was to the point where later settlers thought those crops were native to the US.

There was one great quote I liked. “A weed is a plant whose virtues we have forgotten.” I think this is insanely accurate. McCully mentions how they used to be valued as food, as medicinal herbs; sassafras used to be known as some miracle cure-all. Samuel Mitchell was surgeon-general of NY and he utilized some of these. This is so different from our stance on weeds today. When you Google it, the first things that come up are products or companies you can use to get rid of “pesky” weeds. But that’s just a matter of opinion. Sure, if you’re a farmer or a gardener I understand how you could be irked by weeds choking out your crops or vegetables. Still, there’s always a good side to the bad.

I found a couple sites that talk about weeds you can actually eat and I thought that was so interesting. Like we can eat dandelions! Which is cool! European settlers used to put them in salads. They have more beta-carotene than carrots. Purslane leaves can be put into sandwiches for vitamin A & C. Boiled bamboo can be used in salads and stir fries. I feel like these are all great things to know so that none of these weeds go to waste. Yet these are the things not taught in classes.

http://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/garden/8-weeds-you-can-eat

http://www.livescience.com/15322-healthiest-backyard-weeds.html

 

Chapter 9 Response

This chapter was filled with many things that annoyed me. The first thing I want to talk about is the pigeons, which in general, always annoy me. They are the embodiment of a species adapting to their urban environment. We see them everywhere, eating and sleeping all the time. They make nests in signs on buildings and in the beams of our train trestles. It’s the same with the sparrows who make nests under our air conditioners and awnings. Like the falcons on top of our skyscrapers, they have made the best of a bad situation. However, unlike the falcons, they’re just too used to humans.

What I mean is that years ago, they’d probably fly as far away as possible from us. But the pigeons we’ve grown up? They’ll eat right out of our hands and they absolutely do not move out of the way when we come charging through. I’m not complaining that they’ve adapted. Kudos to them for getting used to their environment and doing what they have to survive. That’s more than what I can say for many people. What irks me is the fact that they’ve been forced to go to such limits. We’ve taken everything from them and they couldn’t fight back.

This sounds terrible, especially when you see it in addition to all the unnecessary killing that’s gone on over the years. Killing for food is one thing. I can accept that. But in the chapter, McCully mentioned the over-killing done just for sport. It didn’t really show any skill since there were so many birds, you could miss your target and still hit one. It really did a number on NY’s bird populations and only now are eagle, red-tailed hawk, and owl populations building to what they once were. Let’s hope preservation laws are enforced to keep them safe.

Chapter 8 Response

I find McCully’s book a lot more digestible than the last because instead of throwing many scientific terms at us, McCully tries to get us to connect on an emotional level by talking about her own experiences and work which we might relate to. She ponders the same question we do about why we are drawn to trees and forests in general: “Is it that they mark time, living beyond our individual lives, and connect us to history?”

And they do connect us. The southern-most tip of Brooklyn that she mentions was marked by a tree is a place I’ve passed many times in Flatbush. There’s also the 450-year-old tulip tree in Alley Pond Park where my high school’s softball and soccer teams used to practice. It’s weathered and gnarled, but still standing tall. Or Forest Park, in general, which I cut through to visit my best friend in Richmond Hill. All these trees are older/were older than I will ever be and they connect me to everyone who’s come before me and will come after me. It’s as close to immortality as anyone will ever get.

Trees have been through a lot. Incoming European settlers thought the forests to be infinite – they used them for ships, for trade, for houses, for firewood. Unlike the Native Americans, they didn’t have a spiritual connection with nature. It’s this spirituality that I think we need to bring back to society. Every forest and every tree has a story and it’s up to us to learn and preserve these stories.