When my father would tell me that I was dense, I did not take it as a compliment, but I did not quite understand the insult either. It did not occur to me that what he meant to tell me was that I was incapable of learning, stupid, even, because I knew that for my father, to be dense was to be a jackass: stubborn. But density is oh so much more. There is a certain power in density, mass divided by volume, in certain circumstances that my father may have, in some askew manner, been actually keying me in on.

In the world of our river, density comes mostly in to play in the interplay between salt water and fresh. If you just consider the comparison between a glass of fresh water, and a glass of water of the same volume into which a table spoon of salt has been added, it is plain that the added salt would make the water weigh more and, therefore, be more dense than the glass of fresh water. But water is water right? So when salt water meets fresh, they should mix and find some medium between the two, right? This is true, but the mixing is not instantaneous. The variables of density, temperature and flow affect the time that it takes for the solution to find this medium point.

There is a fun way to test this effect. You will need four glasses, two of which are filled with water, blue and yellow food coloring and ½ cup of salt. One glass of water will remain as is, but into the other you should add the ½ cup of salt. Should the salt not dissolve entirely upon stirring, you can heat the water slightly in a microwave, stirring occasionally until dissolved. Add 4 drops of yellow food coloring to the fresh water, and 4 drops of blue to the salty water. Pour half of each color into one of the empty glasses so that you know have a two half glasses of yellow (fresh) water and two half glasses of blue (salty) water at approximately the same temperature. Slowly add the salty water to the fresh and ved versa and compare how the two mix and become another color or find where you can see where the two remain separate. If you have tries the experiment, or perhaps if you have not, you will note that the salty water tends to stay towards the bottom of the glass. The same happens in a tidal estuary such as in the Soundview area and farther upstream, only instead of water being added from above, you have two walls of water moving towards one another. The salt water is carried upstream by the tides and the fresh water is carried downstream by gravity. There is a point where these two meet and it is called the salt wedge. The Denser salt water pushes under the fresh water, settling towards the bottom, as the

Lighter fresh water floats over the top.

This wedge can stretch for miles as it does in the Hudson, or it can be much more vertical if the flow of the river is equally matched by the rise of the tide. In the case of the Hudson, the salt wedge is carefully watched since Poughkeepsie gets much of its drinking water directly from the Hudson. If the salt wedge runs too far north, the flow is increased to push it back down south. Sampling the water at different depths will show the differing salinities.

Fresh water means less than .5 parts per thousand (ppt) of salt, while brackish water is between .5 ppt and 17ppt, and oceans average 35 ppt. Most estuaries, like the Bronx River Estuary, are brackish. At our last monitoring of Drew Gardens miles above the mouth, Sally found2-3 ppt salinity from a surface sample. As a I walked upstream to get a few pictures of The Phipps Youth Employment Program students that were being introduced to water quality monitoring, I saw a nice size blue crab crawling across the bottom of the river in an area were the flow was quite slow.

I thought that the water would be dangerously low in salt for this creature which thrives 10ppt-25ppt but there could be mitigating factors. One is that the test we had done was surface which means that towards the bottom it could have been a little more salty. There is also an interesting study from 2005(POSEY Martin H. ⁽¹⁾ ; ALPHIN Troy D. ⁽¹⁾ ; HARWELL Heather ⁽¹⁾ ; ALLEN Bryan ⁽¹⁾ ) that discusses the tendency for juvenile blue crabs to seek areas of lower salinity(3ppt) in the summer and the fall. The theory put forward by the authors is that they are actually looking for waters safer from predators since salinity and predators were positively related. In any case, it shows the river’s improvement and, should this crab not be atypical, demonstrates the importance of this part of the estuary to all waters down river.

Dad may have been right about my being dense, but now I know that density can also have its advantages.

DG

Last week I spent a day in Washington DC “grading” teachers’ papers with two others. Unfortunately there could be only four correct papers out of the fifty that I had to go over, and no matter what the perspective, that was all that could be right. We were one of eight panels choosing the next 30 teachers that will travel to the Galapagos Islands this November as a part of the Toyota International Teacher Program. There were a record 900 applications from all over the US from classroom teachers from 6^th to 12^th grade, and teachers of all subjects. It was our charge to decide who would “pass” on to the trip of a lifetime, and who would not. While I felt privileged to be asked to participate in the process, I did not relish the idea of giving what would turn out to be a failing grade to those who would not be visiting Las Islas Encantadas.

The process starts with the staff at iie perusing the entire application for completeness. Not following the basic rules of requirements and word counts, and submitting all the requested information. To be fair to all, the rules must be followed strictly. They then take a slightly closer look to see if anything is just outrageous such as “ I will bring back a Galapagos Tortoise and a Marine Iguana to use in a travelling presentation to bring to the fore the importance of conservation.” But the reviewers at this stage are fairly lenient, leaving most decisions of merit to panelists like myself.

At the panel stage, three people, usually including one teacher, somebody in an environmental field, and somebody from an international organization, are given 50 applications to read and rate. For this particular application, the four sections were: personal statement (why you should go), Impact statement( how you will use what you learn), a lesson plan( how you present environmental issues in a hands on manner in your classroom), and reference letters. The most heavily weighted parts were impact statements and lesson plans, but the personal narrative would often inform how you reviewed the other sections. It was not the writing itself that would make a story compelling, but the heart and relevance that the teacher portrayed. Impact statements had to cover students, school and community and be feasible. Lesson plans had to be hands-on, innovative, even if you admit getting the idea from somewhere else, and extendable into various disciplines. It also helped to write in the future perfect, leaving out the maybe’s and might’s.

Strange as it sounds for a trip to what people consider a science teacher’s dreamland, being a science teacher did not work in your favor. Toyota wants environmental education to be interdisciplinary and requires a diversity in subject matter taught by the teachers that are chosen. Almost sixty percent of the applicants taught science. When you consider that a high estimate would be fifteen science teachers, that means that the science teachers are vying for, at best, a one in forty spot. Teachers in any other discipline are up against the odds of one in twenty. I don’t gamble, not even on a one dollar lottery ticket, but my money would be on the teachers of other disciplines.

What it finally came down to was a fight for somebody that a panelist took on as cause. You said to yourself, “This person not only deserves this trip (All really did), but would be an asset to the other US teachers, the galapagueño teachers, the Toyota program, and their school and community.” Then we had to duke it out, give in a little and hope that others believed your arguments.

When all was said and done, we chose a stellar group to take advantage of the program, but had to let go an equal number that were on a par with them. Bittersweet is one way to describe it but the biggest discussion on the way out the door was the applications were all amazing. There were twenty people that I wanted to contact immediately to share ideas and use as resources. For privacy, however, all materials that I was given were destroyed on site, and I have to hope to find those people by happenstance at a later date.

So I got my wish: To grade teachers papers. Unfortunately I could not listen to the explanations as I could with Krishad. But, for those that were not chosen, there will be another round soon enough, and all that can, should apply.

DG

The word community is bandied about for many different conditions, but community is that place where you are known to others, and others known to you. Often, especially in urban areas, community is hard to define, and even harder to come by. Though I may try to present myself, or fool myself into believing otherwise, being a part of a community is something that I have really searched for, even in the days when I strove to be an outsider. I needed to have a community to be outside of.

When I was accepted by the NYC Teaching Fellows, I knew that I would have little say in where I would teach. That was not such a concern for me, but where to live was a concern. I ascribe to one of Paolo Freire’s philosophies of teaching, of living, in fact, that states that in order to teach a people, in order to make a change for the better in a community, then one must be a part of that community. When I knew where in the Bronx I would be teaching, my wife and I found an apartment within a fifteen minute walking distance from my school. This fulfilled my Freirian belief, but also made commuting a non-factor and made good use of the structure of a city; Things are close together to improve access. Cars and commuting kill communities.

On my first walk to school on a hot July morning some six years ago, I met two people: A young girl sitting on the steps of a building who asked me the time (now a teen who walks her younger siblings to school) and a man on a the corner of 156^th and Union with a cup of coffee in his hand who responded to my cordial, “Good morning,” with and energetic, “Good Moornin!”

The man’s age was hard to figure out. He was a Black man beyond forty but less than sixty. Several years later when I heard him say, “ Buenos dias, hijita!” to my wife, and I knew that he was from a Latin American country. I figured out that he was Garifuna after hearing him speak to others a few times, though I cannot say from what country. He was there every day, looking slightly disheveled, as though he had spent much of the previous night in that spot. Much of the year he would wear a black or Navy, down coat, and, to my eye, had the look of someone who was homeless. I have no proof of this latter description, though he was on that street corner, in front of the bodega, every morning on our way to school and every afternoon or evening on our way home for six years.

For a couple of years, George was just the man who said hello. Then, one afternoon as we were walking home, we heard somebody shout from inside the bodega, “Hey, George, you want a cup of coffee?” Nancy, Damian and I looked at each other in wonder: His name is George. We toyed with the idea of saying, “Good morning, George,” but it didn’t seem respectful to use somebody’s name when they don’t know yours. One of these days, though, we thought, we’ll stop and introduce ourselves. At least the knowledge of his name gave us a way to refer to him when he was not in view. For six years all told, we walked past him and shared salutations. For the past nine months, our daughter has been a part of this tradition as well, receiving an even more affectionate “Good morning!” (“Buenos Dias,” a mi esposa) which punctuated our walks to Bethania’s big brother’s school.

As white guy in a mostly Latino and Black neighborhood, I stick out. My choice of dress, often including a tie, sets me apart even more and to the visitors or more recent arrivals, it is sometimes assumed that I am either a cop or a missionary. The suspicious glances that I would receive on that one corner would quickly fade away as soon as George marked me as a known entity by stopping whatever he was doing to share a hello. On one of those mornings, I realized that I was not such an anonymous passerby to George. “¿Lo conoces?” asked a young man standing near the bodega door, believing me out of hearing range. “Claro,” replied George as though it were a ridiculous question, “Es un maestro. Por aqui pasa siempre.” I was a part of a community.

As a teacher in the NYC public schools, I considered the community an integral part of the education of my students. There is a great need to get students to look at their community as a resource and a positive place. While it is not impossible to know a neighborhood in which you do not reside, only spending time working inside of one building in that neighborhood cannot offer a clear perspective into the surrounding world. This is exacerbated when the people that have no contact with the neighborhood are the administrators. “No, you cannot have afterschool classes that go out into the neighborhood because it is too dangerous.” Or, my favorite response when I noted to an assistant principal that a particular troublesome student had become my neighbor: “Move out. Why would you want to do that to your family?” Yet the neighborhood is somehow acceptable for the student body. I found it difficult even for myself to be as much a part of the community as would like with all of the demands of teaching and the restraints put in place by administrations; school, city, state and federal. That desire to be a part of the community was one of the various reasons that I chose to accept the position with the Bronx River Alliance. I would be a part of a community and could focus more of my energies on helping teachers to know at least a little more the communities around their schools.

On Saturday, June 14^th, I had the pleasure to be a community member who enjoyed the Hunts Point Fish Parade along with my family and so many others. The event, organized by The Point CDC, was everything that community and community events should strive towards. The Parade started in Hunts Point Riverside Park, where Addy, her son and the RTB crew were setting up for community rowing. From there, it marched towards Barretto Point Park, through the very communities that The Point serves and acted as a celebration and an invitation to participate in the day-long event at Barretto. My son and his friend rode along with Bronx Classics bike club, while I rode next to two kids with the oversize fishing poles and the juggler on the unicycle, ringing my bell to the rhythm, ding, ding, ding,-dingding. The concessions and tables were a mix of locals, local organizations and larger organizations that served food, offered games or shared information. As we walked around Barretto, filled by the way, with ten times the number of people I had ever seen there, I felt very much a part of a community. Adam and Kelly from the Point not only organized a great day, but there attitude of welcome made all feel at home.

Tomorrow, I will again walk past that little shrine made by George’s closest friends and the tears will again come. I have a little note that I want to leave next to the candle that my family placed on Friday afternoon. There will be an apology for never taking the time to really speak with him, and let him know that he will be remembered by our family. But I also have a message for him: There are some good things going on in our community, and every time I say hello to someone new, I’ll think of the daily reassurance that he once offered me, that I was a part of a community. Thank you, George.

DG

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As often happens, a decision made to correct an earlier mistake or to provide access for one group that had been previously ignored can benefit many people. A very clear example is for the benefit offered to parents with strollers, bicyclists, and pullers or pushers of carts every time they mount or dismount a sidewalk. Those little sidewalk cut-ins that make the transition smooth were designed to aid the disabled in ADA of 19–. That decision made many lives better.

Two new parks have been opened in Hunts Point in the last year. Ostensibly, the parks were opened to offer the local population access to the waters that surround them for recreation and relaxation. But it may and should grow into something much more.

All along the Bronx River, we are working towards making the river itself and its adjoining environs more accessible to the thousands of school children that live nearby or have heard about its history. The combined efforts of the Education Program and the Recreation Program offer ideas and opportunities to teachers from the area, ranging from a canoe trip with a dissolved oxygen lab to a simple, “Yes, you can walk around in that area.” The teachers are thankful for the support, and the students express their gratitude with their keen interest. About thirty of those students came together on Thursday, June 5^th at Hunts Point Riverside Park for the Bronx River Student Symposium. They showed how they are learning about water quality, the wildlife and restoration of the river. Incredible has it sounds, students came on a day off from school to share what they feel is important about the river; Their Bronx River. The access to the river has turned on something in these students far beyond the science or environmental and social issues that they discussed. The students were the ones teaching those that were present about the river. They showed they own the issue and the place, and they are poised to take over. Nothing could make a teacher happier than to have a student move beyond them, hopefully make them superfluous.

The desire, no; the feeling of responsibility to bring about one change for one person or group that need can often have a greater effect on groups beyond those targeted. The Bronx River Alliance and the groups that we partner with have tried to increase access to the river for teachers and students, and the students will take it on to the world. In the case of the banister that I put up for my octogenarian parents, the first one to use it was nine month old daughter. The first person to grab on to that banister was not the intended user, but that smile of satisfaction that came from the safe feeling of the sturdy oak rail told me that I had done the right thing.

DG

When a body is found, it must be identified. I have never met José (Josefa?)  So I could not physically identify the body, but I have seen signs. It seemed rational to me to want to know for sure, so I threw out the suggestion that the beavers incisors should be measured for width and I could compare that width to the evidence I could find along the river, and possibly eliminate José from the list of possible victims. My inquiries, however, went unanswered.  I can only imagine that the people and institutions that received my e mails believed that I was just a crackpot, but the exit of the animal whose arrival last year was touted as proof of the river’s revival, should also be seen as raising questions about sustained improvement. Recent finds and anomalies raise just that issue as they do the importance of regular monitoring.

On Monday, May 5, 2008, as I met with the FOZ for their weekly water quality monitoring. I decided to wander upstream. I checked first some of the signs that I had seen early last winter, and found no changes. I’ve come to believe that José is a juvenile, an adolescent, like my son. There is nothing scientific in this just that like my son, José prefers a buffet to a sit down meal. He snacks, sometimes heavily, and then moves on. At the known snack stops, I didn’t notice anything new. Then I saw a few new, white chew areas. And then a few more. Finally I found an area that still had some bits of fresh chips clinging to the tree, chips that would have been washed away in the previous night’s rain. Walking down to the bank of the river, I was also able to find tracks in the mud. There were various small prints, and some that looked like goose tracks. I learned that those “goose tracks” were most likely the back, flipper-like feet of the beaver.  The combination of evidence seems to point towards life, not death.

I feel better knowing that I have not had to bear witness to such a tragedy at this stage in my stewardship. José lives. I am still sad for the beaver that did pass away, and feel that it is very important to discover the reason for its mortality.  I pledge, before all, to do my duty, to the river and the Bronx, to keep as close an eye on the river as possible, to better serve the amazing stewards that volunteer their time to gather data about the river, and work towards a better river for all.

Knowledge is like a virus in that once you learn one thing, it is hard to stop it from stretching into learning another. The simple act of reading or listening can cause a word or an idea to hang in your mind until another comes across and makes the connection permanent. It is as though we are all our own zone of proximal development. On April 23^rd I was lucky enough to work with the Friends of the Bronx Zoo to, ostensibly train or re train 7 people in water quality monitoring. The zoo has a history of monitoring several FOZ were interested in getting back into the flow.  As I spoke about pH and buffers, I had a fairly clear idea that I knew what I was talking about. As I added water to the pH 4 buffer, I wanted to show how to dilute it and raise the pH. Instead, it actually went down before hovering back around pH 4. “You have just proved that it is a buffer,” Dione, one of the FOZ said. “That is why it is a buffer, and not just a solution with a pH of 4. It is making sure that the pH stays stable.” I thanked my student and then moved on.  Dione, as it turns out, has a PhD in chemistry and should have been the one speaking to the group.  But, that little thing she pointed out to me sent me off to look for more information.

One of the parameters that the Bronx River Stewards measure is pH. Most people know something about pH and its relationship to acids and bases, but just what does that mean, and why is it important to our river? What does the pH level tell us?

The term pH is derived from the French puissance d’hydrogene, meaning “strength of hydrogen”, referring to the hydrogen ion that affects acidity. The pH scale runs from 0-14 with values less than 7 being acidic and values greater than 7 being basic.  At 7, there is equilibrium between the two. The scale is logarithmic, with each level having a difference of a power of ten from the other. So pH 5 is ten times more acidic than pH 6.

pH values of natural water vary, but below 5 or above 9 are detrimental to organisms, and normal values range from 6.5 to 8.5. Most aquatic life, however, has adapted to specific pH and sustained change can cause damage to a population.

To counter these changes, natural water acts as a buffer. A buffer resists change, like the pillows that my wife and I pile up to keep my 8 month old away from of the stereo. She pushes against them, put they bounce back, and Bethania cannot change my radio station (NPR builds vocabulary). The Bronx River Stewards use buffers of set values, 4, 7 or 10, to make sure that the pH meter is working correctly.  The pH values of these solutions can only be changed by adding a buffer of a differing value. Natural water should react in the same way; using the natural hydrology to create a buffer against change. The problems occur when either a stronger acid (acid rain, pH 5.6) or a stronger base (concrete washout water>12) enters the system and causes a rapid change to the pH level.

            But a pH change can be a secondary effect as well. For example, photosynthesis uses up dissolved carbon dioxide (pH 6.3) effectively raising the pH level. On days when photosynthesis is most likely, such as sunny days during the growing season, the pH level of the river may rise. But what appears to be a natural effect may have very human causes. Fertilizers and human waste, both generally acidic compounds which enter the Bronx River on a regular basis through stormwater runoff (CSOs) and illegal sewage connections (Yonkers), increase plant growth and even the algae blooms recently noted on the river. So the introduction of an acid causes a basic reaction. Organic respiration at night produces CO₂ thereby lowering pH levels and dissolved oxygen levels, as does the massive decomposition that follows mortality.

            The level of pH in the Bronx needs to be monitored closely, not just for the answer the value itself gives us, but for the chain of possible causes of that value that need to be looked into.

Thanks, Dione.

references: http://waterontheweb.org/under/streamecology/09%5Fph%2Ddraft.html, http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/journal/environment/river/is54nyc.htm, http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/hall/9111/DOC.HTML

DG

Nic and Carly at Banana Kelly High School have built their ninth grade science curriculum around the Bronx River and water quality monitoring. They have also given students a window onto their world and some of the students have taken that view very seriously. As I walked between the two rooms where the Science Fair was set up, I was amazed at the amount of information that the students had sorted through and had to make sense of in the form of a presentation. There were discussions about salinity, turbidity, global warming and comparisons of the levels of pollution in the Bronx River, the Hudson River, and the Newtown Creek. Just like with adults, the depth of the discussion varied greatly across the classes, but you could feel that the dominant opinion was that the subject merited discussion.

In the interest of full disclosure, Nic and Carly put me in the difficult position of grading the projects that I viewed, a job that they face everyday. I was given a rubric and had to see where on that scale the students stood. This is necessary because the students, all of us actually, need to know that people are looking critically at everything that we say and do. The unfortunate thing is that I wrote all notes on those rubrics instead of in my notebook, besides the fact that I was a little harsh in my grading.

At any rate, many students showed that they had looked deeply into the data and asked, “Why does the salinity level change?” or “What is the relationship between the amount of precipitation and turbidity?” Then they tried to make sense of these numbers, a task they call mental mastication. The data, mostly just numbers and dates, was obviously much more to these young people; they had collected the data, seen the parts of the world they were talking about, and knew that they were talking about their world. The dialogue that they engaged in was intimate which made the information relevant.

Beyond the actual information, the off-the-cuff remarks of many of the students made me really think about what education is really about and how hard it is to judge the understanding of a student. “Maybe,” Said one, “The Bronx River is cleaner because people have been trying to clean it up. Maybe that’s what the Newtown Creek needs.” To be able to see beyond the first view, beyond the numbers and actually bring in a historical perspective is profound and extremely heartening. It is beyond science and into life itself.

I was glad to have been invited by Banana Kelly to this event, but I must admit that I felt a bit like W.H. Auden: “When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.” That goes for the students and their teachers as well. And for these dukes, our natural world is their court.

DG

I met with our Pilot Bacteria Monitors today up at Muskrat Cove as they gathered more samples near the offending outfall above Nereid Avenue. Professor JD and KS wanted to share some preliminary findings with me and let me know about the near future studies. It was a beautiful day to walk along the river and discuss fecal coliform.

The good news is the Prof. JD has decided to run  a monitoring program that will cover several sites on the river and use 4 full time student monitors. The bacteria monitoring will be their focus rather than an aside, and special attention will be given to making comparisons between not only sites on the river, but dry days and wet days. This will allow for comparisons between the constant bacteria content of the river and that which is affected by the various CSOs. Hopefully this baseline data, besides helping us build a long term bacteria monitoring program, will serve to show the possible benefits of the storm water retrofits planned by Westchester and the City.

The bad news is why JD thinks this is worth dedicating time and  other resources towards. Basically it comes down to numbers, and in this case the preliminary numbers are high.

According to the EPA,  safe water for contact should be below a mean of  200 fecal coliform colony forming units (CFUs)per 100mL, and never rise above 400 CFUs/100ml. This number, I have learned, is still somewhat  a subject for debate due to the lack of a clear definition of “swimming.” But it is their number at this time. The monitors have come up with a mean level of 184CFUs/100ml at the 174^th St./Starlight Park  site,  which approaches the limit. But at the Muskrat Cove site, the mean so far is an astounding 1650 CFUs/100 ml!  More than 8 times the legal safe water contact  limit. Muskrat Cove beach will not be opening soon. These are preliminary data, still being collected and analyzed, and are meant to inform our  immediate contact with the river, but the numbers are a bit frightening, from my perspective. The actual findings will be reported by  our pilot team very soon.

The samples at Muskrat Cove were taken right near the, as Yonkers calls it, the McLean Avenue Outfall, meaning that the samples would get the full dosage of the illegal connections that flow into the Hillview Reservoir overflow. The level found down river, to my untrained eye, seem to show that some dilution is occurring and until further study, we can assume that the problem is not being made worse inside the border of the Bronx. Small comfort; but comfort none the less.

All officials have been notified of the Mclean Avenue outfall and the illegal hook ups that run through it: EPA, DEC, Westchester Health Department, City of Yonkers, NYS Attorney General. But I wanted to know where it might be coming from so I drove up and into the neighborhood that sits between the reservoir  and the river, to get a feel for what exactly illegal connections come from. I found some large buildings, but mostly it was well kept, nice sized single family homes. Some even had American flags hanging out in front. I wondered; Do any of them know that they may very well be flushing directly into the Bronx River?

DG

On Tuesday, April 1^st, I attended the Teens For Planet Earth Symposium at The Bronx Zoo. There,   groups from as close by as Van Cortland Park, and as far away as Washington state came together to share some of the projects that they have been working on in their communities.   The projects were as varied as the students backgrounds.  The  projects included invasive removal in Van Cortland Park, raising bees in Bergen County New Jersey,  and raising awareness of the importance of snags, nurse logs and amphibians in Washington State. All of the groups  had  command of their information, and the Washington State group had even run a teacher training  for their local teachers.  It was very impressive, to say the least.

Then on Friday, April 4^th,  VOICE held a mobile workshop for the  Planet youth conference.  Young people from Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice,  Rocking the Boat, and The Point gave a tour to several other groups of young people from all over the country, including New Orleans and Richmond California.  The YMPJ Youth Organizers presented their CSO campaign, gave a tour of the backyard rain barrel and rain garden system, and green roof on the church roof next door.   Rocking the Boat youth met the  group at CPP with rowboats and led a boat tour of Bronx River shuttled them down to Hunts Point Riverside Park and their program site.   Finally,  youth from The Point’s ACTION program took the group  along the future Bronx River Greenway to their community center where their afterschool programs  were in action and they heard about ACTION’s work.   I didn’t get to stay for the later events, but I was very impressed with the energy of the participants as they discussed Environmental Justice  in their world.

On  Monday,  April 7^th, it was the YOUTH CAN Conference at the American Museum of Natural History. This time it was students from all over the world running the show, running workshops and  panel discussions about  worldwide environmental issues.  There were elementary kids talking about watershed function and high school kids comparing water quality of rivers in New York and Bangladesh.  It was amazing how much energy and excitement was out there.

So,  George Bernard Shaw did not quite have it right; Youth is not wasted on the young.  There are some incredible young people out there doing incredible things.