Last year Barbara Bick and I, Dan Burr, opened Neptune Nature School, Alameda’s first, and only, forest-nature school. The all-outdoor, all-weather preschool serves children ages two-and-one-half to five years old. The school nurtures a child’s curiosity of the outdoors and believes children grow best when allowed to be themselves.
When Earth Day first launched in 1970, it signaled the rise of the modern environmental movement in the United States. Today, more than one billion people celebrate Earth Day across the globe, bringing international attention to the environment.
Here in Alameda, we can take inspiration from the legacy of Earth Day as we address our island’s environmental challenges. I am proud of our city’s Public Utilities Board and Alameda Municipal Power (AMP) for working to protect Alameda and the planet from the harmful effects of climate change.
I was recently discussing my one-year anniversary as executive director of the Friends of the Alameda Animal Shelter (FAAS), when a friend asked me if I had ever been bitten. Not by an animal, I said, but those human bites are the worst! My friend laughed with me, but we both knew it wasn’t totally a joke. (In full disclosure, a rabbit once nibbled on my arm as I was holding him for a video shoot; but he thought my arm was food and it was more of a pinch than a bite.)
I have to admit, I kind of enjoyed being respectfully blasted in last week’s commentary by Rasheed Shabazz (“Confronting Racist Symbols in Alameda’s Public Spaces,” March 29). His writing brought up a series of excellent points that to some degree deflate the problem with presentism. Given current events nationwide, and the point that at least one of Alameda’s racist references were christened during a period of Jim Crow-era oppression, Alameda would do well to reconsider the names of Haight Elementary School, Jackson Park and, let me add, Calhoun Street.
Just after one of those intermittent showers I was walking across the parking lot at our Health Club. A few steps ahead of me a young woman was walking and apparently talking into the air, saying “See, there’s a rainbow. See?”
