Another Condor Into the Wild

Flying Free

Credits:

Photo: California Condor, by Flickr user andrew.weaver. This photo has a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial license.

Sound: wind.wav, by thefreesoundproject user EHR (aka Sinu Spiral) This sound has a Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 Attribution-Noncommercial license.


Another condor flew into the wild sky for the first time on Saturday September 26. The sky was clear and deep blue and the temperature already hot by 10 am. About 200 eager observers gathered at Pinnacles National Monument to hopefully witness the release of four young condors raised in captivity. When the time came, several wild condors soared and circled over the ridge line above the flight pen holding the young birds. We held our breath and watched. It is up to the condors to come out on their own and sometimes, at these events, they just don't. But, today, lucky us! A young bird emerged and spread its giant wings to soar in the sunshine. What a sight!

Virtual Brazilian Waterfall

Credits:
Photo: Cachoeira do Sossego, by Flickr user gjofili. This photo has a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Sound: Small Waterfall in the Forest, by soundtransit user Derek Holster. This audio has a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.

I had sort of a hard time with this assignment, because I couldn't figure out to look at all the thousands of pictures with Creative Commons liscenses on flickr. But then, I found a flickr user I liked, who used the CC license, and searched his logs. I found the audio resources sort of overwhelming, and not particularly to my liking, until I found "Soundtransit" - which is RAD! I love the whole idea of field recordings... so I found a picture and a sound from the same national park in Brazil. The sound is called "small waterfall in the forest," so I did my best to find a licensed picture that matched. I love soundtransit, I"m gonna go play around there some more!

In the end, this was awesome though, because it really felt like homework - I had to read and look around, and found a cool new sound website. Thanks Lisa!

Football flashbacks

Labor Day night, at 7 pm I went to the Doak Stadium at FSU in Tallahassee, Florida, to see if I could get a ticket to the opening football game between the FSU Seminoles (click on Seminoles for info on the Seminole Tribe) and the Miami Hurricaines.

Tickets cost $65 to buy from the ticket office, but I wanted to see if I could find something at the gate, so I just went to the game to see what I could find.

The girls in the photo to the right, saw me looking for a ticket, and came over asking, "Do you want a ticket?" When I said yes, they were so pleased, and they wanted to just give it to me. Then they asked, "Can we get our picture taken with you?" It was a fun way to start the game.

You may have heard Lisa talk about the school "cheer"(and gesture). It is really something to see and hear...when the whole stadium is full of people doing the "tomahawk chop". The experience made me wonder why the shared enthusiasm of the game can't be manifest in a shared desire for health care reform. The crowd was diverse, and I kept saying to myself, in the tune of the cheer, "Hea....lth Care for every.....onnnne."

An interesting day /night in Tallahassee. Love to all, Sara

Nature and Food

I forgot to mention that I work for The Nature Conservancy in case you didn't know. I also love to read Amey's blog Vegan Eats and Treats - check it out.

xx, Laura

Hi from Laura

Hi Gang,

It's a beautiful, sunny morning in Santa Cruz. Everything seems very relaxed and pleasant. The fall crop of figs are ripe and the raspberries have picked up again. Sara Wainwright and her boyfriend, Andrew, have been here since Saturday. We've been hanging our around Santa Cruz and having fun eating and touring around. I hope we can hook up with Amey sometime today.

xxx, Laura

Amey's Post

Last night we had a great family dinner! I made a bunch of yummy corn-based dishes, which I will post sometime today on my blog. All the produce for the whole dinner was from either our garden or from the Cabrillo Farmers Market.

I think that the corn season is almost over now, so it was fun to have a last big hoorah!


This picture is from last year - but it's surprisingly similar to what I bought last weekend - how funny. I even bought peanuts again... but this time I bought something like 24 ears of corn. Whoa!
: P

Sara's first post in the class

These photos are of me, but neither of them are of me in Santa Cruz. These both were taken over this summer (2009) while I was traveling – to Hawaii (on the right) and then to the Mississippi River in Tennessee (on the left, with my friend Martha).

I live in Santa Cruz. I don't know if you are supposed to put the link in a sentence or separate it out a bit...add a few spaces or returns. Let's see if this works. Lisa and Andrew live in Tallahassee. If you are curious, look at the difference between the official site and the wikipedia site. Here is the Tallahassee official site. The first Tallahassee link is to the wikipedia site, which I prefer. It is easier to read and to nagivate.

Today the temperature in Tallahassee was pretty hot, and the air was sooo muggy. Now it is pretty comfortable. Is the convention about linking that the other people understand what you are linking to and why? So you aren't really supposed to explain why you are making the link? I'm not sure if I quite get the principles of how to use this feature.