Authors: Student

Of all the conclusions to all the lectures delivered by the illustrious and mischievous Jacob Holzberg-Pill in his Environmental Science class at the Woolman Semester, the most memorable was this: “We must map this land to understand it, steward it, and make Woolman truly sustainable.” The subject at hand? Agroforestry and the ways in which indigenous peoples managed the land to make it most productive for humans. Agroforestry is highly complex; the wrong technique can have disastrous effects, the right technique can save an entire species.

At the beginning of the project, I had lofty goals: map ALL of the trails, mark the property boundaries, find the student build “Ithaca,” and make trail markers. However my greatest personal goal was to become more familiar with the seemingly massive woods that lend Woolman much of its beauty and mystique. With these goals, my friend and companion Brylie and I set off on our great adventure. We spent countless hours walking the trails, often mapping them multiple times due to unreliable technology or personal error. Many trials marked our heroic journey. We bushwacked through fields of poison oak, debated the importance of trails outside the Woolman parcel, avoided taciturn neighbors, and tangled with somewhat cumbersome technology. In one extreme instance we bushwacked out to the southeast corner of a large Woolman parcel to mark the boundary and began our return hike in the cover of darkness. Brylie slipped and dropped our tracking device, leaving us with only a compass and our intuition to navigate back to campus. Thankfully our forestry skills were proficient enough for the task, and we managed to return (mostly) unharmed.

To what extent did we accomplish our goals? We managed to map many of the major trails, marked several important corners of the Woolman parcel, and found Ithaca, but we decided that creating trail markers was not the most important part of the project. I believe that the raw data we collected was the greatest accomplishment of the project because it will be so useful to future projects involving the Woolman forest. The rough map produced with the data is only a pre-cursor to future student maps that will be more accurate and detailed thanks to the experience we garnered. Brylie will be able to more efficiently train students interested in the GIS (Geographic Information System) Project, and those students will have fewer initial hurdles to leap. Eventually they will not need to worry about things such as marking the property boundaries, they will be able to focus on things like species succession. The GIS project will become more than just a pipe dream of a few curious Woolmanites, it will become the backbone of agroforestry and sustainability here at the Woolman Semester.

    Knowing that our beloved Dorothy, has been wanting a flower bed for a long time, we decided to take it up on ourselves to create it. When we came up with the concept of creating flower beds, we decided we wanted to make our campus even more beautiful and to increase the flow of pollinators for the orchard on our campus. 

We started out this project thinking it would just be as easy as planting some flowers, but we realized we had a few hiccups along the way. 

   We realized that there are a lot of deer that live around the campus. Therefore, we had to research on ways to deter the deer from eating and destroying our plants. In addition, we wanted to make sure our plants would survive the winter so we did some research on mulching and cold frames. Furthermore, another important aspect of planning where to put our flower beds, was taking into consideration of how much light they would receive for their success. 

   The last problem we encountered was increasing and keeping the population on the campus. We wanted to make sure that they would be visible to the visitors and residents of the Woolman campus. Our original thought was to place them on the south facing side of the admissions office. The area that we planned to put our flower beds was not agreed upon by the head of school. Although we were not able to go with our original plan, we were able to find two additional spaces to put our flower beds. The first place where the flowers are located is surrounding the bird bath. The second place would be in front of the office doors. 

   Although we had a lot of obstacles we were able to overcome and successfully create beds you see today... 

~Special THANKS to: Jacob, Malaika, Grace, Sandy Cumen, and Kristen!!! (thanks for ALL of your help...couldn't have done it without yawl!!!) =)

(Image is Retired Philadelphia Police Captain, Ray Lewis, being arrested in his protest against police brutality on November 17th, 2011 at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in New York City.)
 

Occupy

A slice of pie

A warm glass of milk

Given to a policeman on a cold night in Lon-don

And our revolution's getting un-done

And built up again

And the policeman is our friend

Our ally

As we've cried, they've also cried

They are workers as well

So please don't give them hell

These men and women in riot gear are so near

Because they are one of us

So there's no need to fuss

Over details because

These men and women in riot gear are on our side

As we stand outside

On the streets of New York, Cairo, Lon-don,

And other recent revolutions getting un-done,

They are helping us out

There's no need to shout

For you know that as soon as these men and women

Take off their badges and take off their shields

That they are workers like us and they will yield

To the protestors on the streets because

A couple feet away from us

Right Here

Right Now

Stand our brothers and sisters, hand in hand

We must work together or know the reason why.

We

(AS A WHOLE)

Must Occupy.

Humans are thought to be violent by nature and not by the society that they are raised in. In my opinion, I do not think that we are violent by nature; I think that humans act violently due to the different environments that they grow up in, the people they are raised by, and the media that our society broadcasts to not only the youth, but the entire world. In my personal experiences I have been raised in a very welcoming home, surrounded by a loving family, but the media has definitely affected some of the ways I have thought about violence, especially when I was younger.

Where a person is raised really affects who they are going to become, and their views on violence based on the experiences that they have in that particular environment. In the article it states, "Many hunter-gatherer societies in particular are entirely peaceful. And the cultures that are "closer to nature" would be expected to be the most war-like if the proclivity for war were really part of that nature. Just the reverse seems to be true."(Human Nature Isn't Inherently Violent; page 16). I found this quote to bring up an interesting point because often when you think of people living out with nature, our minds often associate that with warriors because they are always out hunting for food, when they are actually more peacful than anything else. If a person is raised in the city, or a place where there is gang violence, gun shots, fighting, or even in a family where there is abuse either physical or vebal can really affect the mentality of an individual being raised in this type of environment. If you are raised in a place where all of this violence is present, you may be raised to think that it is just in the genes of humans to be naturally aggressive, or maybe you don't appreciate the violence and want to stop it. I think that more often than not, if you are raised in a culture of violence then your brain is "trained" to think that it is only human for us to act in such an aggressive manner.

Family and friends play a crucial role in our lives, whether they are acting as role models or parents. The people you are raised around really affects the outlook you have on human violence. In the Seville Statement it states, "How we act is shaped by how we have been conditioned and socialized. There is nothing in our neurophysiology that compels us to react violently."(page 2). In this quote it is saying that humans are shaped by the ways they are conditioned when they are raised, and that there is nothing in our head that gives us the urge to act violently. I feel that if you are raised in a very abusive family you may just learn from what you observe from a young age. I think that if you are raised in a loving and open family, that you are given more opportunity to form your own opinions on human violence. In my own experiences I feel that growing up in a very loving home gave me the chance to realize the violence and conflict does happen, but even then I never realized the base of the actions.

Media seems to play the biggest factor in our culture that influences our understanding of human violence. When we are constanty surrounded by thoughts of war, movies about fighting, games and toy that relate to guns, and it ALL a NORM in our society. I think that growing up in this culture where this is all accepted, that us as humans think that violence is OKAY because its what all the other kids are doing.

Humans being thought of as "violent by nature", is in my opinion caused by three factors; the environments that we are raised in, the people we are surrounded by, and the media that our society broadcasts to us starting at such young ages. I feel that all of these points play a huge role in why we thihk that we are violent by nature, when in fact we are not.