There once was a Lass with a Tiny Home On Wheels (a converted shuttle bus) who needed a place to park her Home. She lived happily amongst the redwoods…until the rain and the shade and the damp (and the very, very long drives to work) drove her inland, to drier climatic regimes and shorter commutes. […]

Once upon a time there was this peacock who came to Buddhaland…becoming a tourist attraction but wrecking havoc on the local ecosystem. After studying about food webs, ecological balance, and invasive species, my students made a film about what happens when peacocks are introduced to Northern California. During our last week of the AP Environmental […]

Animated videos posted on YouTube are helping to revive ancient languages, nowadays spoken mostly by tribal elders. Hupa, Pomo, Miwok, and Wukchumni are among hundreds of languages native to tribes and tribal communities throughout California. According to criteria set by the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), every tribal language in California is considered […]

Story-films helping to conserve Native Californian languages produced each semester by students in my Nature and World Cultures class are making international waves. A Feburary 2016 Al Jazeera story by reporter Rob Reynolds on the Hupa (Hoopa) tribe’s efforts to keep their language alive – “Hupa: A language that refuses to die“– contained a shout-out […]

“An environment of hate – whether it is subliminal or overt, directed towards nature or cultures – perpetuates a polluted atmosphere. This pollution comes at a tremendous cost: a social cost, a medical cost, an ecological cost, an economic cost. And the pollution, in the form of racism, atmospheric particulate matter, and greenhouse gases, circulates […]