Post #19 ECHO

Of all the field trips I was a part of the trip to ECHO was definitely the most interesting and most rewarding to me. Their general goals and mission to help the less fortunate through education, training, and assistance has proven to be an amazing foundation to grow this non-profit business. I found it to be an amazing feat that this foundation that started in 1981 is now helping and has volunteers in over 180 countries. I believe that this has been such a growing business because of how they run their assistance programs. Giving a person food, money, or seed is a great thing for a person to do but even in the video they show in the beginning they follow the old quote “give a man a fish, feed him for the day, teach a man to fish and feed him for a life time”. What they mean by this is that they don’t just go into these countries and give them supplies they give them education, education on how to grow better crops, education on what crops to grow, and education on utilizing resources. I am also glad that I waited towards the end to go on this field trip because the reading I did out of state of the world really touched basis with this field trip. I had an idea what the drip irrigation system was but it actually has one of these irrigations set up within the farm. Another type of irrigation they had that touched basis with the reading was the treadle pumps. The demonstration that the tour guide gave us showed how simple and cheap these irrigation systems can be. Around the world there are millions of people struggling with undernourishment, one country and one village at a time these volunteers from ECHO are educating and changing the quality of life for these individuals.

post #18 Downtown Fort Myers

The trip to downtown Fort Myers turned out to be a very exciting time followed by a lot of disappointment. It was interesting to see how everything has changed from the older days and also see how some of it has stayed the same. With in just the 2 block area of downtown that we had to walk through it was crazy to see the hundreds of different things that you could do from boating, to seeing shows, to enjoying a great meal. I believe without this scavenger hunt I would have missed out on so many of the little details of downtown. The scavenger hunt made me slow down and truly take in the scenery while developing an understanding of what was really here. My favorite part of the downtown experience was being able to compare images from the videos that we watched prior to the trip to what actually stands there now. With a favorite part of something always comes the least favorite. While walking around trying to find items on the list it began to hit me that the majority of the downtown Fort Myers history was gone or altered into something new. In the older days theatre was so important to the people and the growth of the city and now one of the major theatres down town was turned into law offices. It was saddening to see our history swept to the side while evolution of a new time takes over. Along with this evolution also came multiple empty business lining the streets of downtown. These empty business is a reminder that no matter how good something once was change is always lingering.

Post # 17 Service learning

The service learning that I was a part of seemed to be very rewarding. I split my hours between two separate locations, the food forest on Florida Gulf Coast Universities campus and Barefoot beach preserve. Of the two I would definitely have to say that the food forest was more rewarding then the barefoot beach one. When I participated in the food forest we were doing much of the physical labor of carving out paths and making mounds that would be used as the planting surface. The forest, once finished, is supposed to be a self-sustained garden that FGCU students can come and get free fruit and vegetables instead of having fast food or other unhealthy foods. It was interesting to find out what determines how and why foods are deemed organic to those that are not organic. The people in charge of the forest explained that because of the compost that they were using as the soil had such a high grade that the food can then be considered organic. Although I found the food forest to be the more rewarding of the two locations I did hours at, Barefoot beach had its plus side to it. When I arrived at the beach I saw signs that it was gopher turtle mating season. This was interesting because there were mounds all over the side of the road, 69 to be exact. These are all the burrows of the eggs that the turtles have laid, and these burrows are protected with in the preserve. Also while I was at Barefoot I was trimming plants and doing general clean up around the beach. About half way through the work day one of the park rangers took me on a tour through the backwoods of the beach showing me different plants and the modern use that we have for them. I truly enjoyed both of these experiences and am looking forward to doing more work with both in the future.

post # 16 Pre Fort Myers trip

To my surprise Fort Myers has such an extensive and interesting history that is most likely unknown to everyone who lives here. Fort Myers that was named after a Captain in to war was initially names after a general named Harvey. With the change of name many other changes were also implemented. One of the first changes recorded is the building of the first school in 1880. This school was the only school for the entire city, and at this time the city went all the way down to the keys. The school 2 years later was burnt down by a disgruntled student. The City then asked for assistance in rebuilding the school and they were not granted the help so they built it themselves. With the new school came a new county, Lee county named after Robert E. Lee.  A good 70 years later in 1950 there were then 12 schools in the city of Fort Myers, this may not sound like much but it was the stepping stone to the 72 schools that we now have in the city. As the town continued to grow so did the need for communication, in 1884 the first newspaper was started the Fort Myers press. This growth caught the eye of many big names Thomas Edison and Henry Ford are a few of the great people that came to Fort Myers and had a significant impact.

It is crazy to see the changes that occurred over 50 or 60 years in even just the economical stand point. The growth of the city in the late 1880’s and 90’s attracted many merchants that flooded the downtown Fort Myers area. The merchants truly accommodated the needs of the consumers, they would stay open late just to compensate for closing at noon so everyone could go fishing. In the 1960’s this all began to change when the Edison mall was built. This was the first time that all these department stores were together and that a person shopping could be indoors in the air conditioning. This soon took the place of being outside going from shop to shop and began to take a toll on the downtown economy. Fort Myers has grown in astronomical amounts and it is crazy to see what has come out of this town and the good that was created from inventors, entrepreneurs, and the general population.

Post #15 love it or lose it

A new issue that our younger and growing population is facing is biophobia. Biophobia can be labeled from discomfort in natural places, or hate towards things that are not manmade. There has been a growing trend of biophopia of the population that is growing up with a large amount of technology being introduced into their lives. People have not always had this biophobia, maybe not by choice but because in the older days people lived off the land and it was the life line for survival. The more knowledge we gain and the more technology that is created makes it easier and easier for humans to be biophobic. Although some may just have the idea of biophobia in their mind, many people act on biophobia due to what we have done to our planet. The pollutants that we have introduced into our environment are being shown it is the cause of pathologies within humans. With the increase of disease from nature it is understandable that less people want to spend all their time out side. It’s not a surprise that people do not want to go out and experience the wildlife now after we have hunted animals into extinction, or that we have destroyed animals environments, or that we have been selfish and created global warming killing of hundreds of ecosystems. To counteract this newly found biophobia or erase it from existance there must be a biophilia revolution of those who love our environment and nature enough to save it. To make this change from biophobia to a nation of biophilia we must eliminate the denial aspect that people have that our land is only good if it can do something for us. We must also be able to imagine a life of a biophilia centered world and believe that we are capable of sustaining it.

Post # 14 Endgame

Politics has always played a role within environmental needs since it ever seemed important to the people. Even our home land of Florida has been suffering from the un-sureness of our government on how they want to handle situations. A key item that environmentalist worry about is the preservation of the everglades. Conservationist have been doing many things to help protect the wetland; stopped plume hunts, preserved millions of acres of wetlands, mandated minimum flow to the everglades national park, and secured the largest nutrient clean up in history. With all this being done the everglades are still dying and the greatest enemy it faces is further delay. Despite the dangers of losing ecosystems and species forever there are always still nay-sayers that believe that it is just the course of life or that it is not important that we are losing it. These nay-sayers never seem to care until they see that taking a stand can benefit them towards an election or helping something they believe in.

                In the efforts the help the everglades the Clinton administration elevated an idea of nature over people and guaranteed 79 million extra gallons of water for the park. Many non-environmental interest groups though that this was ridiculous and unfair because it violated the original consensus process. With the uproar of the other interest groups the Clinton administration quickly backed out of their guarantee once again showing how politics play a role in the success or failure of our environmental needs. Although there are always people that oppose ideas that people have there are the other people that stand by and continue to fight for what they believe in. After a long traitorous road, the everglades bill to restore and preserve the everglades was finally signed.

Post # 13 Land ethics

Ethics has been touchy subject for many years through out all types of situations. One situation that is never really thought of is the ethics of the land. In the article it compares land to how Odysseus treated his slave girls as just property. To this day there still are no real ethic dealings between man and their relationship to the land, plants, and animals that all strive on this planet. Ethics is said to be a premise of that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. One of the topics that stuck with me through this article is the idea that everyday Americans pledge their allegiance to “land of the free and the home of the brave”. The article goes on to explain that we do not do what we preach, the land that we love we treat unfairly. We demolish plants and ecosystems as if it is nothing, we pollute our waters, and we infect our soils. If all our land was “human” or so called “useful”  we would have rules or ethics put in place to regulate these issues. Although there are not land ethics being implemented yet there are a few baby strides slowly taking place. The majority of plants or animals can not be “used” as something to eat, sell, or put to economic use. Because of this lack of necessity of these certain plants or animals they are casted to the side until they are in danger. Once these non-economical species are in danger people then find a way to make them seem important. An example that the article speaks about it the use of the songbird controlling insects, there is very little information or data on this but as long as it seemed economical it seemed important. I agree with Leopold when he speaks that land ethics cannot exist without a true understanding, love, respect and admiration for the land. Without these traits our country and our world will continue to be stubborn and our land ethics will never develop, education is the key to sucess.