Watershed Videos

The Babb Creek Watershed Association has been working for many years to clean up coal mining pollution left behind. See how they've done it.

http://www.eomega.org/omega/faculty/viewProfile/b8e7c7f9bd010051c7c36b74dec04736/ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a resolute defender of the environment. He is chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper, an independent environmental organization founded in 1983, and a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Hailed for spearheading the fight to protect New York City's water supply, his work led to the creation of the Watershed Agreement, a landmark piece of environmental legislation, upon which others around the world have been modeled. He is the coauthor of the best-selling book The Riverkeepers.

This is a video from the Berkeley Watershed Poetry Festival 2009. This segment contains poetry by Robert Hass, and one poem read in unison by most of the featured poets at the festival. Below is a short description of Robert Hass. ROBERT HASS, Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005, author of sixteen books including poetry, essays, translations, and anthologies, U.S. Poet Laureate Emeritus, Pulitzer Prize 2008, National Book Award 2007, two-time National Book Critics Circle Award, MacArthur Fellow, University of California, Berkeley Professor. If you would like to find out more about the creators of the Berkeley Watershed Poetry Festival, go to: http://poetryflash.org For more about the videographer go to: http://rhodespoetry.com

Joseph Matheny in coversation with Klint and Jillian from Esozone, talking about the new open source and unconference model being used this year. ========= After EsoZone Portland 2009, we will release the EsoZone Protocol, a set of guidelines similar to an open source software license that will enable organizers to host an EsoZone in their own city as long as they are free and follow the unconference model. Portland s weirdest event just got weirder This year EsoZone an annual Portland conference dedicated to the occult, fringe science, and other offbeat topics is forgoing a pre-planned schedule in favor of letting attendees create their own agenda. On October 9th, participants will arrive at Watershed PDX and collaboratively create the schedule. The event will be free and open to the public, and anyone will be able to propose a session, lead a workshop, or suggest a group activity. The approach is called unconferencing, a technique pioneered by tech-industry events. Portland has played host to a number of unconferences in the past few years, including BarCamp, WordCamp, and CyborgCamp. Event organizers Klint Finley and Jillian Ordes-Finley were inspired to transform EsoZone into an unconference after attending CyborgCamp in December of 2008. I was amazed at how quickly the schedule was put together at CyborgCamp, and how smoothly the event ran. We d agonized over the EsoZone schedule for months and were still changing things at the last minute. I was really impressed by how the whole unconference model worked, Finley says. The pair hope this new approach will help EsoZone better reach is goal: fostering connections between its eclectic and oftentimes outsider audience. Finley says This should be a better platform for getting people to interact each other, and making sure the event centers around the subject matter the attendees really want to discuss. EsoZone will use the same scheduling system used by CyborgCamp and BarCamp. Participants will propose sessions on 8.5 x 11 pieces of sticky paper and place them on a large schedule grid on the wall. The sessions can then be rearranged as necessary as attendees negotiate times and spaces for each session. New sessions can be added to empty slots at any time during the event. In order to give people an idea of what to expect, the organizers are encouraging likely participants to propose subjects on their online forum in advance of the event. However, nothing will be decided until the actual event. EsoZone will also be exhibiting esoteric art by a variety of artists. Watershed is such a cavernous space, we have room for a staggering amount of artwork, Ordes-Finley says. Although artists will be allowed to hang art the day of the event, they are encouraged to check in ahead of time if they have questions or could have any logistical issues. More information, and contact details, are available at esozone.com

It s Memorial Day in 2007 and we can t remember a better day spent on the river. Uncle Dave makes his presence know as our, first time, Featured Fisherman. We find some amazing, tail walking, Flint River Smallie action on a breezy, Spring day.

Last week, we took a look at how mercury enters the San Francisco Bay. This week: Now that it's here, how is it affecting us? Quest talks to local fisherman, a physician, and a Bay ecologist to find out how we're contending with the Bay's worst toxin.

You might not know it from the textbooks, but California's gold rush was also a mercury rush. Quicksilver mines near San Jose provided gold miners with the mercury they needed to separate gold from ore. 150 years later, we're still facing the consequences of gold-rush era mercury, much of which is lodged in the Bay's mud and in its fish. Quest reports on the legacy of mercury mining, and how Bay Area agencies are attempting to clean it up.