Share and Voice: California Trip 2009

For this share and voice I decided to share my experience of visiting California! For spring break 2009 I decided to go Santa Barbara, California to visit my high school friend, Michael, who had moved there to attend college and to visit my brother Matt who also lives out there. While I was there we did many fun things. I got the chance to go to L.A., Hollywood, and Bel-Air. While in L.A. I went on a star search and got to see many celebrities houses like Jennifer Lopez, Nicole Richie, Bob Barker, Lauren Conrad (LC), Dr.Phil, David Beckham, and many more. My goal was to see at least one star and I ended up seeing 2, Joan Rivers and America Ferrera (Sister Hood of the Traveling Pants). Some other fun things we did were went whale watching, visited piers, attended a street dance, and toured the college in Santa Barbara. It was crazy to see how different their environment is from Minnesota's! California has some of the most beautiful scenery from the beaches to the mountains. While there we hiked in the mountains where there had just been a forest fire, went for daily runs, and even rode bikes through downtown Santa Barbara-which I do not know if I could do again. If you did not know California has some of the craziest drivers. Anyways, I had the best time so if you ever get the chance to take a trip, go to California you will love it! Below I posted some pictures from my trip. Enjoy! Me in front of the Beverly Hills sign

The Hollywood sign on a foggy day.

Me at Venice Beach

The pier in Santa Barbara

Look familiar? It is the Fresh Prince house!

mmmm fresh oranges

This is Jerod (left), me, and Michael at the beach.

Reflection: Weeks 1-4

These past four weeks of environmental health have been busy but fun! I have learned so many new things in this short time. Some of the things I have learned about are:

• Blogging (how to blog, using gadgets, making posts, following others, designing your own personal blog)
• What an ecological footprint is and why they are important
• How an eco-friendly building is built and why they are important
• My group member's blog have given me a lot of good information (especially the share and voices)
• Good food ideas

I have learned a lot about blogging. I love being able to blog about things that I want to talk about. These issues or events are what are important to me so to be able to share that with others is cool. Then being able to read what others think is a plus. Another plus of this class is being able to share food ideas. I like seeing what people come up with and why. I think between environmental health and health 4000 I am going to be getting a lot of good recipes ideas! :) Going to go to the Bagley classroom was also a lot of fun. It was interesting to hear about how the building was built and why. It is nice that UMD was so supportive of the idea of being able to be out in nature.

I have learned a lot about myself too. Taking the ecological footprint was a wake up call. I cannot believe how many resources I truly use. Before this class I used to think about the environment here and there but now I really think about what I do. It is definitely a lot different when you are constantly reminded about how important the environment is. I am now trying to become more eco-friendly by driving less or car pooling, recycling more often, and reminding others to do the same.

Read'n'Seed: First Quarter of The Last Child in the Woods

This was my first week of reading the book, The Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. I read pages 1 through 70. These pages covered the introduction, part I, and two parts of part II. For the next time I plan to finish up part II and read part III.

There are many main topics this part of the book covered:

• Children born during the last 2-3 decades are the focus
• Gifts of Nature
  
• New Relationship between children and nature
  
• Children are raised differently than in the past
  
• Nature/Foods being chemically altered
• Criminalization of Natural Play
• Depression and Nature

There are many things I have learned from this book already. Being that the children born within the last two or three decades are the focus it is really interesting to read because that includes me and a lot of others in my life. I have never really thought about how much I do not experience nature. When driving I am usually listening to music or talking on the phone or if it comes to a longer trip I usually have my I-pod in or am watching a DVD. Just that fact alone makes what this books says very true. These days most kids do not want to go play outside, they want to watch T.V., play video games, or go on the computer. Yes, we do have a lot of information on the environment but we do not apply it. I do know global warming is increasing and the ozone layer is depleting but what does this really do for me? I could not tell you the difference between trees or what a certain flower is. What this book really wants to convey is rebuilding the relationship between nature and children. They want to show us that nature is beautiful and has a lot of uplifting effects such as making you happy when you are stressed or even less depressed. I was surprised to find out that nature has this effect on a lot of people. For example, they talk a lot about depression and kids. One fact Richard Louv stated was, "A 2003 survey, published in the journal Psychiatric Services, found the rate at which American Children are prescribed antidepressants, almost doubled in five years; the steepest increase-66 percent-was among preschool children" (2005, p. 47-48). This fact alone is outrageous. Preschool children already on prescribed antidepressants? Something has to be done to decrease this number. Hopefully throughout the book it will give more ideas on how to truly enjoy nature and what it has to offer.

One word I had to look up was biophillia. According to Wikipedia, biophilia is "the love of life or living systems" (Wikipedia, 2010).
Another word I looked up was Utilitarianism. According to Wikipedia, utilitarianism is "the idea that the moral worth of an action is determined solely by its utility in providing happiness or pleasure" (Wikipedia, 2010).

This problem affects societies in many ways. If people and children do not appreciate nature why would they try to preserve it? What I mean when I say this is people could truly stop caring about nature. Littering, vandalism, and demolition of nature areas could increase. The book has already talked about how a lot of the parks and trails are being taken away due to low numbers of certain animals. Also, as I talked about before, stress and depression are already high in the U.S. and if nature can help lower it lets use it. If preschool aged children are already on prescribed antidepressants I wonder how many adolescents and adults are because of the increased pressures as you get older. This problem with nature has been a problem for many years it just has not been talked about. Now after reading part of this book I want to show to others it is a bigger problem than we think. Just looking at myself I realize I am one of the people who has been taking the environment for granted and that needs to change. We cannot expect to have these same resources ten to twenty years from now if we do not start appreciating it. What I think could be done to bring awareness to this issue is to have events or discussions for communities, bring it into the classroom in both k through 12 classes and college courses, and have available information to the public.

Eye Opener: Ecological Footprint

Reading about Ecological Footprints was very interesting. I had no idea what an ecological footprint was until reading about it in Wikipedia. Your ecological footprint is how much land and sea is needed to regenerate the resources consumed by you on Earth. Everyone's footprint is different because not everyone uses the same amount of resources on a daily basis. To figure out my footprint I took a quiz called the Earth Day Footprint Calculator. I was very surprised to find out my results. According to the quiz, if everyone lived like me we would need 4.6 planet Earths to provide enough resources. It also takes 20.5 global acres of the Earth's productive area to support my lifestyle. My results are actually embarrassing. I obviously use way too many resources. The questions they asked to find out my score were unusual. For example, asking how much meat I ate. More specifically, they broke up the meat into categories like pork, chicken, fish, beef, and diary. I was not sure what that had to with ecological footprint but after thinking about it eating our animal resources does effect the Earth in many ways.

Another quiz I took was the Carbon Footprint Calculator. The Carbon Calculator calculates how much CO2 you emit into the air. It mainly questioned how much I travel, how much food I eat that is locally grown or packaged, and how much gas and electric are used in my home. At the end of the quiz it compares your score to eight other countries and of course the U.S. was the highest. This quiz is not as reliable as it could be because the values are based on the U.K. but it still gives you a good idea of what your carbon score would be.

The last quiz I took was the Travel Calculator Quiz. This quiz calculates how much emissions you put into the air while driving to work, sporting activities, shopping, and holidays. My score ended up being worse than average. I think it was worse than average because when traveling the majority of the time I am alone and when I go home I have to drive approximately 130 miles so that ends up being 260 miles both there and back.

Overall, I found learning about the Ecological Footprint very interesting. I realize after taking these quizzes that I am not very environmentally friendly. When weather permits I need to bike or walk places more or start to carpool with friends. I also need to recycle more. There are many easy and efficient ways to help the Earth and I need to start doing some of them. Hopefully after seeing me become more environmentally friendly, my family and friends will do the same thing.