Thursday, October 1, 2009

Taking a page from my mom's book


My mother was a 3rd grade teacher for a hundred years before she finally retired. When she started she was terrified of teaching science because English was her forte. She had never taught science before. She eventually lost her fear and became Washington State's Science Teacher of the Year (go mom!) She had this lovely philosophy--if you don't know, make it up.

Well, I didn't know a lot of stuff driving eight hours through Oregon and northern California. I wanted to drive so that Mi'ita would get the scope of our country. California is huge. We live in a temperate rain forest and driving down I5 is showing her the land. So, here I am talking very knowledgeably about forests when I know diddly squat.

"We live in a temperate rain forest, Mi'ita," I intoned pedantically. "This area in southern Oregon is a semi-arid mixed deciduous and evergreen forest. See the oak trees and the ponderosa pines? Semi means half and arid means dry. It isn't a desert here, but it's much drier than where we live."

"See that stand of dead trees, Mi'ita? There are some pine beetles eating the trees. Loggers took out the mixed trees and planted a monoculture. Mono means one and culture means the plants that live there. The pine beetles eat the type of tree that the loggers planted and since there's only one type of tree, they are wiping out forests. If there were ten different kinds of trees, then only one tenth of the forest would be damaged and the animals would still be able to live there."

"Look at this dried up riverbed, Mi'ita, and how low Lake Shasta is. California must be having a drought. It's probably global warming."

Go ahead and laugh. Then tell me what I got wrong so that I can straighten her out.

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