Mon, July 21, Guided Kayak Tour begins at Felix Neck at 10 a.m. for ages 11 and up with an adult. Cost is $35 or $28 for Mass Audubon members. Registration required; call 508-627-4850.

Every Wednesday in July and August, 2008
Mytoi Volunteer Day
9 a.m.–12 p.m.

A great way to spend the morning! Volunteers needed to prune, weed, and help maintain Chappaquiddick’s Japanese-style garden. Join us at Mytoi on Chappaquiddick anytime throughout the morning. Every extra set of hands is greatly appreciated. Please let us know if you plan to attend; call (508) 627-3599.

Martha’s Vineyard learn all about how to have a successful Watershed Block Party. Plan on attending Waquoit Bay’s annual Watershed Party! Tuesday, August 5, 2008 – 3:00 pm – 6:30 pm, Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Route 28, Falmouth

• To raise awareness about estuaries and watersheds by providing information to people about how they can become involved in protecting them.
• Provide relevant and interesting information through fun and engaging activities.
• This is a great opportunity for you to let people know about your organization, volunteer group or community involvement.
• This event attracts adults and children, so we recommend hands-on activities and interesting visuals to engage families.
  

The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society of North America has a recent vacancy for their summer- residential intern program. We are seeking to fill this position by August 1st for a period of 30-90 days, depending on the qualifications and availability of the applicant. The program is based in Plymouth, Massachusetts and provides a unique opportunity to garner experience in field research, education and conservation of marine mammals. WDCS is willing to help qualified students obtain credits for the program through their college or university. The internship is a volunteer position and there is a nominal housing fee. Please contact Sue Rocca (sue.rocca@wdcs.org 508-746-2522) for more information including an application.

The StormSmart Coasts program is designed to help people working in coastal communities address the challenges arising from storms, floods, sea level rise, and climate change, and provides a menu of tools for successful coastal floodplain management.
http://www.mass.gov/czm/stormsmart/

Where to begin: Board of Health
http://www.mass.gov/czm/stormsmart/
other/local_officials/board_health.htm

As a member of your community’s Board of Health, you are responsible for protecting public health. Sewage disposal (Title 5) and the supply and quality of drinking water are the two health regulations governing most new development. Your board can help protect public health in your community by helping prevent development in the floodplain that could threaten public health or safety. Creating a Multi-Objective Management Plan Multi-objective management interweaves No Adverse Impact (NAI) principles into all aspects of community planning—simultaneously addressing not only land use but also efforts to protect community economic, cultural, ecological, historic, fiscal, and aesthetic resources. Multi-objective management gathers interested parties, such as residents, business leaders, and local officials, to decide how to manage land in a community, integrating as many interests as possible—not just hazard reduction or economic development.

http://www.mass.gov/czm/stormsmart/
planning/multi_objective_mngmnt.htm

Philadelphia (AP)—Governors from the coal fields of West Virginia to the Corn fields of Iowa talked Sunday at their summer meeting about moving beyond ethanol produced just from food sources.

They sometimes have different priorities in reaching this conclusion – priorities that can be as simple as who grows corn and who feeds it to livestock.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/
GOVERNORS_GLOBAL_WARMING?SITE=MAHYC
&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-07-13-14-32-54

For decades, children have hawked candy and cookie dough to friends and family to help fund extracurricular activities and school playgrounds.

Now a handful of entrepreneurs have set out to change that paradigm, offering ecologically friendly products for kids and parents to sell for school fund-raisers. From recycled wrapping paper to fair-trade coffee, the business owners are pitching the products as viable fund-raising alternatives for schools.

http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB121607802464352547.html?mod=us_business_biz_focus_hs

To reach Edward O. Wilson’s office on the Harvard campus, one must first push through a door with a sign warning the public not to enter. Then, enter a creaky old elevator and press two buttons simultaneously. This counterintuitive procedure transports one into a strange realm.

It is a space that holds the world’s largest collection of ants, some 14,000 species. Curators are checking the drawers, dominated by the tall figure of Dr. Wilson, who is trying to contain his excitement: the 14,001st ant species has just been discovered in the soils of a Brazilian forest. He steamrolls any incipient skepticism about the ant’s uniqueness — the new species is a living coelacanth of ants, a primitive throwback to the first ant, a wasp that shed its wings and assigned all its descendants to live in earth, not their ancestral air. The new ant is so alien, Dr. Wilson explains, so unlike any known to earthlings, that it will be named as if it came from another planet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/
science/15wils.html

DENNIS —As visitors and residents flocked to northside beaches to enjoy the surf and sand yesterday, there was a ceremony marking a big new step to keep them clean.

Against the backdrop of Sesuit Harbor, local, state and federal officials announced that Cape Cod Bay is now a federally designated no-discharge zone.

This means boaters can no longer discharge waste into Cape Cod Bay, and violators will face fines up to $2,000. The no-discharge zone extends three miles out from the coast.

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/
pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080715/NEWS/807150304

Running the Numbers
An American Self-Portrait
Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

~chris jordan, Seattle, 2007

Cans Seurat, 2007
60x92"
Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.