To our Monthly Monitors:
Here fishy fishy……..
We are a bit more professional than that during our fish collections. Speaking of fish collections...they are right around the corner. We will get started in early June. This summer we have about 26 sites we will be fishing in the Central Great Plains ecoregion: OKC metro, Norman, Stillwater, Lawton, and a couple scattered out west. If you’d like to help us on a fish collection please contact me kim.shaw@conservation.ok.gov and I’ll keep you in the scheduling loop.
Celebrate with us……
Please come celebrate 30 years of Blue Thumb with us!! May 20th, 10am, Oklahoma Aquarium!! We will have some nice festivities, a fancy lunch, plus you can tour the aquarium for free!! Please sign up to attend and celebrate with us!!
Let’s talk chemistry…..
Thursday, June 8th, at 6pm we will offer the second installment of our data talks: “Interpreting Chemical Data”. We hope you will be able to join us live. If not, this will be recorded and posted on our website for future viewing. Come learn more about the tests you perform monthly. Come with questions about your chemical data. You can join the webinar here.
That’s a sunfish, That’s a midgefly……
Saturday, June 24th come out to Spring Creek: I-35 (SE Edmond) and learn some techniques on fish and bug ID. Times for this will be coming soon; stay tuned to website, Facebook, this newsletter.
Kim Shaw Blue Thumb QA Officer
Starting in mid-March and going through the month of May, Blue Thumb staff members receive numerous requests to be a part of outdoor learning experiences and Earth Day events. The greatest demands tend to fall around mid to late April. We work with children a great deal, but there are other kinds of events primarily for adults that claim our time and energy as well. Let me also say we are proud to be invited to events that throw attention to how we can all be better citizens of our planet.
In honor of how most of us think of Earth Day as a moment to make some kind of a contribution to educate others about taking better care of the earth, I am harkening back to a book that has provided to me constant valuable fuel for how we earthlings fall into categories. We are all “Takers” but we can also be “Leavers.” We never want to fall into the category of simply being Takers. Let’s look a little more closely.
The book to which I refer is Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Published in 1995, it is described as a novel about humanity finding a way to save the world from ourselves. My intention is not to do a book review; rather, I would like us to consider the concept of being a “leaver”:
- If you are a leaver you will choose to conserve water even if you have no problem paying the water bill.
- If you are a leaver you will support the local farmers’ market even though the grocery store might be more convenient.
- If you are a leaver you will wade gently into a conversation that will perhaps not be comfortable, but you will do it because you care about Planet Earth.
- If you are a leaver you will eradicate Bermuda from the native plant garden in the middle of the summer.
- If you are a leaver you will care for your own patch of Earth so that it is a functional landscape.
It would be very easy to go on, but you can continue your own leaver list. Perhaps you can also visit the public library and check out Ismael.
Cheryl Cheadle Volunteer Coordinator
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