Hurricane Irene

When I was about 12, my parents, my brother and I were camping on Cape Hatteras in North Carolina when a hurricane approached. Heavy rain quickly flooded the campground and rose on both sides of the road we took on our escape to the north. Occasionally the water engulfed the road and the land on both sides, creating the uncomfortable sense that we were driving IN the ocean.

I learned to respect hurricanes. My dad and mom often told stories of the huge 1938 and 1955 storms that had inundated parts of our home state, Connecticut. When my brother moved to Gulf Coast of Mississippi, I saw the damage that had been done years earlier by Hurricane Camille.

With Hurricane Irene due here in Maine in several hours, we have battened down our coastal home and are about to stow the deck furniture at The Naturalist's Notebook, which sits just a few hundred yards up the road from Seal Harbor beach. We won't get swallowed up by the Atlantic storm swell, but the beach and the coastal road near here may not fare so well. The campgrounds in Acadia National Park are being shut down, so we're absorbing a family of five into our house temporarily. Should be a memorable couple of days. The highest winds we've experienced at our house have been about 60 mph—and I hope that that record is still standing 48 hours from now. I'd be eager to hear what you fellow East Coasters are going through.

Chimps Ahoy

Our Thursday night event at the College of the Atlantic was a grand success. Dr. Lilian Pintea, the vice president of conservation science for the Jane Goodall Institute, delivered an engrossing talk on the state of chimpanzees and how the institute is using new technology to help study and protect them and their rapidly vanishing habitat in Tanzania, Uganda and Congo. I might try to post a video of part of his talk if I can figure out how. Below are a few photos from the event and the Jane Goodall celebration that preceded it at the Notebook.

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Kids who took part in our Jane Goodall Day activities at the Notebook painted chimp masks, created shadow puppets and celebrated the life of the great naturalist.

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One of several chimp illustrations done for the event by Kathy Coe, the portrait painter who teaches our children's art classes.

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A shadow puppet of Jane Goodall looking through her binoculars at some of the chimps in the Gombe reserve.

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Lilian discussed everything from conservation technology to Jane Goodall's 300-day-a-year travel schedule to the problem of poachers killing chimpanzees for bushmeat.

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Lilian, his wife, Anna, their five-week-old daughter, River....and another of Kathy's exquisite chimp illustrations.

Sweet 16 Update: Meet the Final Four

Even as the Hurricane Irene has forced the cancellation of other major sports events, our Sweet 16 Honey-Tasting Tournament has continued. Visitors to the Notebook continue to dip their ice-cream sticks into jars of competing honeys and then vote for the one they like better. We have narrowed the field from 16 honeys to a Final Four and are about to start the semifinals. Here's the skinny:

Semifinal One: Italian Sunflower vs. Maryland Bamboo (actually that pesky invasive species Japanese knotweed)

Outlook: On paper, the Italian Sunflower has the edge—more exotic locale, creamier texture, more popular plant—but on the tip of an ice-cream stick, who knows? Just as the University of Maryland Terrapins use the phrase "Fear the Turtle" in supporting their basketball team, fans of the Maryland honey declare, "Fear the Knotweed."

Semifinal Two: Maine Wild Raspberry vs. Oregon Wild Red Huckleberry

Outlook: A clash of the titans! Maine Wild Raspberry, the defending Sweet 16 champion, reached the semis by crushing unheralded but highly tasty Massachusetts Breakwind, 30-11. Oregon Wild Red Huckleberry, a tournament newcomer, shocked longtime Sweet 16 watchers by annihilating New York Basswood—one of the alltime greats—42-18 in the quarterfinals after crushing California Avocado 40-17 in the opening round.

Maine Wild Raspberry is one win away from becoming the first two-time champion. But Oregon Wild Huckleberry comes from a region that has produced some of the Sweet 16's best honeys (who can forget 2009 champ Washington Fireweed?), and it has so far shown an elegant, refined style that suggests greatness. Stay tuned...or stop in.

Come to Our Thursday Night Talk: Saving the Chimpanzee

Don't forget that (in can't you read the small type on the poster above) we are hosting a fascinating talk by Dr. Lilian Pintea of the Jane Goodall Institute this Thursday evening at 7 at the College of the Atlantic's Gates Auditorium in Bar Harbor.

Please come! Lilian will talk about how he and his colleagues at the Jane Goodall Institute are using new technology to map, study and protect highly endangered chimpanzees in Africa. He will also talk about his experiences working with Jane herself.

We have a full slate of fun, creative activities scheduled at our shop/exploratorium starting at 10 a.m. on Thursday, which we have declared Jane Goodall Day at The Naturalist's Notebook. Learn about chimpanzees, create puppets, do art, hear a lunch-time reading, write a message to send to Jane—all of that and more!

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Where else but the Notebook can you play games that help you learn about chimpanzees?

Send a Message to Jane

As I just mentioned, we're encouraging you to share with us any thoughts, memories or experiences related to Jane Goodall or any of her books or projects. Did she ever inspire you? Send us a message that we can ask Lilian to pass along to her.

Below is an email we received from our friend Kimber, a conservationist who has worked with rhinos and done other important work:

"I have a handwritten letter from [Jane] that she sent after I wrote to her (years ago when I was finishing up my BA in Anthropology) about my disappointment in not being able to see her in Austin where she had a speaking engagement because it was sold out. I couldn’t believe that she would take the time to write to me, with all of the lecturing and work she was doing! Years later she came to San Antonio for a speaking engagement and after standing in line for many hours, I was given the “Golden Ticket” so that I could go see her. It was so wonderful to hear her speak and then to have the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to actually meet her face to face. She is truly a very special person who really believes in what she is doing to try and help the chimpanzees – she’s amazing."

Among the Jane Goodall- and chimpanzee-related titles we have for sale is Me...Jane, a fabulous illustrated book by one of my former Sports Illustrated colleagues, artist/author Patrick McDonnell, who also draws the wonderful dog-themed comic strip Mutts.

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Call us crazy (you won't be the first), but Pamelia and I held our fourth annual Lobster Independence Day festivities on Monday night at our house. Each year, to show appreciation for our favorite crustacean, we release two large female lobsters that've we've bought at a local pound. We talk with our guests about the life cycle of lobsters (and how older females produce far more eggs than younger ones), we make up lobster poems and songs, and sometimes we attach extra meaning to the two freed lobsters. This year we named them Pam and Paula for the late mothers of Pamelia and our friend Kathy.

The "Green Thing" and the Greatest Generation Our friend Kimber also forwarded us one of those funny emails that make the rounds. This one involves senior citizens, taking care of the environment, and a bit of perspective. It's pretty good:

In the line at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized to her and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.” The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment.”

She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day. Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that old lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint. But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

That's all for now—it's time to head over to the Notebook for this week's Earth News kid-reporter program...