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“I'm here because you're here.” Berkeley, California is known for being the home to the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s. It was and is the site of many protests, drawing vocal minorities to Sproul Plaza and People's Park for demonstrations, activism, and public assembly. So it's come to symbolize what it means to speak out and be heard. But what does it mean to minister to an energized public square? In this Conversing Short, Mark Labberton thinks back to his time ministering in Berkeley, CA. First Presbyterian Church remains a close neighbor to the University of California, Berkeley campus. He describes an approach to public engagement marked by generous listening, a desire to know the individuals so moved to protest and speak out, and offer faithful presence to a community dedicated to protest and activism. About Conversing Shorts “In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.” About Mark Labberton Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller's fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He's the host of Conversing. Show Notes Berkeley, CA People's Park Sproul Plaza (site of famous Free Speech Protests of the 1960s) How to intensify their thirst? “What I really wanted was a conversation.” “Listening to God, which is what the life of Christian worship actually is.” “Living a life of listening, which is central to all Christian discipleship.” “I'm here because you're here.” “I wish there had been a lineup of protesters outside first press asking, ‘How dare you?'… why are we not gathering protestors?” “I was wanting to so authentically speak and preach and live the gospel, that we would be the peculiar people that would cause people to say, ‘Why are you so peculiar?'—not just in that sense of church oddness, but in that deeper sense of why are you the peculiar people of unexplained mercy, unexplained forgiveness, unexplained passion for justice, unexplained sensitivity to individuals, and to societal, social, and systemic needs.” Production Credits Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.
With police moving in at Columbia, a violent clash at UCLA and simmeringtensions at Stanford. At UC Berkeley, the tent city on the steps and grass in frontof and around Sproul Hall continues to grow, with maybe 75 tents there now, butthat encampment remains surprisingly calm and peaceful, with little of thetension we've seen elsewhere. Those students are not blocking access to a Cal education, and the administration is taking a hands off approach for now, with no police presence at all. To find out more about what's going on there, I sat down at Sproul Plaza with Yazem Kashlan, a PhD student in developmental economics who is one of the leaders of the Cal encampment. He is of Syrian and Moroccan descent, born and raised in New Jersey.
The self-guided Black history tour at UC Berkeley begins at Memorial Stadium, where student Walter Gordon was a star of the football team more than 100 years ago. It then weaves through campus, making stops at 13 more locations, each highlighting an important person or landmark related to Black history.There's Ida Louise Jackson Graduate House, named in honor of the first African American woman to teach in Oakland public schools. Next is Barbara Christian Hall, named for the first Black woman to be granted tenure at Berkeley. Other stops include Wheeler Hall and Sproul Plaza, where Black visionaries, like James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr., gave famous speeches."Just knowing this history, walking around campus and knowing it, you really feel like you belong," said student Daniella Lake, who's on the Black Lives at Cal team that created the tour. "Black people have been here for the past 100 years, and if they were doing all these amazing things then, I can surely do it now."You can find the self-guided Black history tour at Berkeley on Black Lives at Cal's website. And soon, on the site, you'll also be able to sign up for upcoming in-person walking tours.Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).Illustration by Heaven Jones.Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
America's college campuses are roiled by debate and controversy over the war between Israel and Hamas, with sometimes violent clashes between student groups. There have been serious incidents at both Stanford and UC Berkeley, as well as at major universities across the country. But at Berkeley, at least, despite ongoing student walkouts and fierce arguments on Sproul Plaza, two well-known professors on opposing sides of the debate issued a joint statement appealing for peace and civil discourse. We've had one of them, Jewish professor of Israel studies Ron Hassner, on air previously to talk specifically about what was going on in the war. KCBS Radio news anchors Bret Burkhart and Patti Reising and KCBS political reporter Doug Sovern were joined by the other professor, Dr. Hatem Bazian, continuing lecturer in Asian American studies in the department of comparative ethnic studies at Cal and the founder and director of the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project there, in today's edition of The State of California.
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.planetnude.coThe cover of Nude & Natural issue 12.2 features a photograph of Debbie Moore, Nina Schilling, and Marty Kent of The X-Plicit Players interactive performance art group, gathered on the steps of Sproul Plaza at the University of California Berkeley. With them, Andrew Martinez, who had recently attracted international media attention for his decision to attend classes while entirely nude. The cover photo was captioned, “The Naked Guy—A New Micro-Culture?”1Andrew Martinez's nude activism began several years before he arrived in Berkeley. According to a 2006 article in the New York Times, in the summer of 1990, at seventeen, Martinez had “fallen under the nonconformist spell of Henry David Thoreau” and began questioning the rationality of having to wear clothing in 90-degree weather. After requesting the permission of several neighbors in his Cupertino, California hometown, Martinez walked down Highway 9 “wearing nothing and carrying a sign that read, ‘I was born naked and so were you.'”2 He was quickly arrested, but his nude protests did not end.
Today, we meet Chief Yogananda Pittman. The new head of UC Berkeley's campus police. Then, we stay on the Berkeley campus to visit their historic home of student activism. And, we'll hear from the man behind the Campanile bell tower. Plus, a reading from Berkeley poet Heather Bourbeau.
A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Host Miko Lee speaks with two women professors Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu and Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez about their approach to education, activism, motherhood and moving forward. Show Transcript A Tale of Two Professors Story [00:00:00] Swati: Tonight on APEX Express, we have a piece highlighting the work of two professors with a lot in common, both Filipino scholar, activists, and grieving mothers who are approaching their work in similar and different ways. Listen in on Miko's interview, exploring both of their amazing backstories, their current work and where they see their futures. Also editorial side note Miko and Robyn's audio got a little funky at times. So it might be a little bumpy. [00:00:59] Miko Lee: Welcome Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu and Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez to APEX express. Dr. Robyn is the first Filipino American to serve as chair of the UC Davis Asian American Studies Department, the first one in 50 years. She also became the founding director of the Bulosan Center for Filipino studies and has authored so many books. Dr. Celine scholar filmmaker, and the new Dean of the Division of Arts at UC Santa Cruz. You worked at my Alma mater San Francisco State University in the School of Cinema. You were a professor of Asian-American feminist film and media studies at UC Santa Barbara. I mean, you've, you've been like through the whole California system. We are so happy to have you on APEX express. I believe you were the first Asian-American Dean in this position. And how does this feel for you to be at UC Santa Cruz during this work? [00:01:51] Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu: As the first woman of color Dean at UC Santa Cruz, as well as the first Asian American woman. Of course, it feels weighty, to hear that the lived experience of it is very much about prioritizing subjugated knowledges, making sure that we have an abundance of voices and abundance of traditions and knowledges that we are teaching so that students can really have access to you know what they want to study as well as be situated, and a long tradition of inquiry and method. It's really wonderful to be at the helm of a division that really takes seriously, people who want to practice art, people who want to study art historically, critically theoretically and we all have defined. Our role, and helping to make this world A place where everyone has a role, [00:02:48] Miko Lee: and art is just being part of who you are that it's just part of being human. Um, Robyn, I want to go way back and talk with you about when you first became politically active. [00:02:59] Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: I would say that the beginnings of my political activism started when I was in either my freshman or sophomore year of high school. And it started with a letter. I was concerned about what we now call racial profiling of young Filipino American men in my neighborhood. I grew up in Union City, California in the east bay. And there was a supposed kind of gang problem in Union City and I recall young boys really in our neighborhood at school, who I thought were being unfairly targeted, not only by police, but also mistreatment really from other authority figures at school, I felt really concerned about that and wrote a letter. I was encouraged by my mom to express my opinions or my kind of concern about how my peers are being treated by writing a letter. And so I wrote the letter and I addressed it to the mayor of Union City, the chief of police, and the superintendent of the school district. And in the letter, I expressed how I felt that my peers were being unfair ly treated and proposed that they introduce what I was calling, multicultural education. The idea I thought was that if our teachers and authority figures really understood us better, and at the same time, if we encountered a stories and histories of our community that somehow this so-called gang problem could be somewhat addressed. So that was my first, I think, kind of a political act or act of activism. And I would then go from there really getting involved in electoral politics. And then after that when I'm in college is really when I started to get more involved in other kinds of organizing work community organizing work. [00:05:10] Miko Lee: I love that. What do you think, was it your parents' upbringing or your peers? What do you think rose up your feisty nature to be able to write back to the school board at such a young age? [00:05:22] Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: I think it was a couple of things. I think one was actually my mother modeling a modeling sort of letter writing in particular as a mode of calling out issues of inequity or injustice and what had happened and I remember this very clearly. I think it probably was my earliest observation or experience of racism and it was at church. I just remember I grew up Catholic and somehow I just remember sitting in the pew and fidgeting and sort of halfway listening to the priest's sermon and I recall the priest saying something about how Filipinos were not contributing sufficiently enough to the parish. And I remember that very clearly. And I remember feeling that tension rise because there's so many people in mass who are Filipino and I could feel, my mother bristling at that. My father, I just, the tension was just so palpable. My mother was feeling after mass talking about how insensitive the priest had been. Didn't quite say racist, that it was just really wrong and a mis-characterization of the Filipino community. And she was going to write a letter and address it. And I remember observing that and that had a real impact on me. I think the influence again, via my mother is the fact that my middle name, which actually translates into ‘to be angry' comes from an ancestor on a maternal ancestor. It was a made up name by one of my ancestors who decided to change his name to Magalit it as an expression of defiance against the Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines and actually ended up joining the anti-colonial revolutionary cause himself. And so that was that's an important story that is passed on through my mom's, through my mom's family. We're very proud of that revolutionary history. I was always very proud of it always insist on using my middle name everywhere and anywhere. And so I think there's also that, that, that feeling, or I think I was encouraged to, we were encouraged to really be those people who would be critical of any circumstances where people are oppressed, exploited, marginalized. Even my father. Growing up he would tell me, you're so fortunate that I left the day before martial law was declared in the Philippines, because otherwise I would have been, I would have stayed and I would have been part of the movement to topple the dictatorship. And I wouldn't be able to be here and be your dad. And I recall to, with my father he drew really a hard and fast lines between himself and people in the community, even friendships would think, he walked away from friendships if he felt a friend was sympathetic to the dictatorship. So there's just all of these ways that might. Both, exhibited as anti-authoritarian kind of, the sort of critique of structures of power that I grew up with and I observed and was inspired by. So I think that's what explains why I would end up doing what I did as a freshman in high school. [00:08:39] Miko Lee: Wow. The power of being angry, built into your DNA and your name and your love it. We love to hear that. Dr. Celine What do you think Drove you into ethnic studies [00:08:54] Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu: I came to the United States with my family, in the early to mid eighties and I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was one of three Filipino Americans in my high school of 3000 people. And the others were my siblings, and education for me was really sanctuary, like being at school because there was food because we were so poor and, we were the center of our worlds, my multicultural set of friends and I loved, learning about my new country, and when I moved to Berkeley as an undergrad, there were many questions that I had, like, why is it that, my parents, even though they were hyper educated in a way, had to work low wage jobs, as immigrants and they had to work two jobs and they were never around then why was I, and my sister, we were 14, 13 years old. We were already working, in order to help put food on the table for our large immigrant family. So I had so many questions. What was this about, why are we here? And. I loved ethnic studies at UC Berkeley, it was a way to really understand subjugated knowledges, and it was really understanding why we no longer ate together as a family because my parents had to work. At UC Berkeley, ethnic studies was such a wonderful place because it was an interdisciplinary approach to history, to cinema, to literature. It was the time where so many amazing people were there. Not only was it Trinh Min-ha, June Jordan, Cherrié Moraga. I learned in their classrooms and also created my own classrooms by becoming an activist, because there was so much in our experiences that I needed to see on paper. Like what it means to walk around with a large Asian American family, what it means to, grow up with a white mom, but be seen as a woman of color, like your closest intimate as this white woman who may or may not see you. So these were stories that my classmates were telling me. We did a lot of organizing, you know, a woman of color magazine named, ‘Smell This', a woman of color film festival, a woman of color retreat. We were really trying to figure out how can we be effective advocates in a world, using our education, using the power and weapons of our education in order to, make significant, impactful cultural contributions that will change the world. And I realized I wanted to really capture the historical moment of how there were so many women of color writing professors there, Maxine Hong Kingston, June Jordan, Cherrié Moraga. Were all there and we were all doing spoken word and poetry slams, and the tradition of women of color literature, with ‘This Bridge Called My Back' Audrey Lorde, Chrystos, Pat Parker and more, this was a vibrant, legacy growing all of us, all of these books were seeds, and I came up with the name, ‘Smell This' in the hallways of the co-op in which I lived in at the time. I think I didn't even really think about it sexually, even though, I'm a sexuality scholar and I'm a porn study scholar, I really didn't. I really thought of it as a multisensorial experience that you enter when you are exposed to writing. That's so truthful, that's so brutal and it's confrontation with, what it means to be a multiply subjugated person, just walking down the street, for me at the time you're growing up as a young adult and you're blossoming, your interests are blossoming, your sexuality is blossoming, and so it was for me, just this multi-dimensional kind of growth, and I wanted this name to assert that multisensorial experience of what it means to grow up in a world. And at the time, give yourself the permission to say my voice is important, my perspective is important, and that's why I called it that. I think somewhat innocently. And I remember just being on Sproul Plaza, blasting, hip hop music, and just roping in as many women of color as we could, to contribute to the magazine. And we had these gigantic parties and we had the band Yeasty Girls perform. And so we had these legendary epic parties that were all about validating the cultural production of a women of color. [00:13:13] Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: I suppose you know, that early act of defiance or that act of resistance writing that letter was the beginnings of my journey towards ethnic studies .I think intuitively I knew that there was something problematic about the fact that I grew up in a predominantly community of color and that there was and most of the students, most of my peers were people of color. And yet most of the figures of authority, teachers, administrators were not people of color. And that the books that we were reading typically had scant mention of our community. So there's some, I think intuitively I knew that that could not be right. When I. First took an ethnic studies course after I transferred to Santa Barbara, my third year after a stint at community college. We're actually, I first encountered sort of women of color writers. But it was a class where I was introduced to This Bridge Called My Back, very important anthology by a co-edited by Cherrié Moraga. So that, was sort of my initial foray into kind of women's studies and ethics studies and then by my junior year at UC Santa Barbara, I had this opportunity to take all these classes to class and Chicano studies, a class in Black studies, but the class that really set me on this path toward academia was a class by Dr. Diane Fujino, it was her very first quarter teaching at UC Santa Barbara and Asian-American studies as an assistant professor. It was really the first time I had encountered a Asian American woman professor who also was unapologetically an activist. And that class seeing her just really changed my life. I was so inspired by Diane by what she was doing in the classroom, which she was inviting us to do students, I felt really challenged and really important in good ways by her and I thought, I think that's the way that I want to that, that's what I want to do. I knew I wanted to choose a career of service, I wasn't quite sure what that was going to be. I thought being a lawyer might be it then I changed my mind, then I thought, oh, maybe I should work as a lobbyist for some of these progressive causes. And then I changed my mind thought I even wanted to be an elected. Maybe then changed my mind. And then professor seemed like something that I could get into. I love learning, I love reading, I love research, I also got introduced to other options that could have been a possibility of me being a labor organizer, so yeah, professor felt like a potential way to actually be at the university lectern, but also to be able to write books that students might be able to encounter in other university classrooms and, Diane embodied this very real possibility for me and I chose to follow that path. She represented and continues to represent to me an approach to Asian-American studies that I want to see more of, I think that As much as Asian-American studies was born out of these movements for liberation, the Ethic Studies movement, the Third World Liberation Front, the Asian-American movement, Black Power movement. I think there is a way that I feel as if Asian American studies and Ethics Studies more broadly has become so institutionalized. And I understand that, some of the reasons for this hyper, this institutionalization of Asian-American studies or Ethnic Studies had everything to do with just the backlash against it and just survival. I think that to survive different kinds of decisions were made such that Asian-American studies are at the end, even ethics studies as a field, had to look and feel more the other disciplinary and interdisciplinary formations in the university and less this insurgent site for knowledge production and dissemination that it it had started off as, and Diane for me, always felt like, still feels like one of the few scholars who continues to see Asian-American studies and Ethnic Studies as the site for insurgent knowledge production and dissemination, as the site where we as scholars use our platforms use our training use the kinds of resources we have access to, to amplify the issues of our communities and to also work in partnership with the community in trying to reimagine everything as Grace Lee Boggs invites us to do, to do the critical work of the thinking and the dreaming and strategizing to achieve a better world for all of us. We created a scholar activist affinity group or section is what we call it. And then we'd, frequently organized panels where we would invite activists to come and engage our colleagues because, we recognize that activists and organizers are also thinkers and theoreticians who have really important frameworks and analysis of the world. And that we as scholars could benefit just as much as we as scholars are, doing full-time work and kind of thinking and teaching that we can also extend different kinds of insights to our organizer colleagues. [00:18:42] Miko Lee: For folks that want to hear more about this. There's actually an entire APEX express episode that covers a reading done by both Robin and Diane at Eastwind Books. Last year you both received a mentorship award. Can you share about how important it is to be a mentor and how you combine being both a mentor, an activist. And a scholar. How do you combine those elements? [00:19:12] Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: you know, Mentorship is so important to me, I think on one hand, I benefited from mentorship clearly, I wouldn't have even been able to pursue this path, this career path if I hadn't had a mentor like Diane, Dr. Fujino to not just exist, but actually to see who cultivated a relationship with me who was willing to take the time to help me understand the world of academia which was a world that was completely foreign to me. Dr. Fujino, along with other mentors that I had as an undergraduate really helped guide me. On one hand I got research experience. So they both, they all helped me gain a real understanding of what an academic life actually feels like. I knew I wanted to be a professor, but I didn't quite know what getting a PhD would require and getting a PhD requires research and I needed the research experience and they guided me through that process by giving it to me helping me to cultivate my own research questions and carry out my own research project. And all of that not only exposed me to this world to confirm for me that yeah, absolutely that is a path I want to pursue. And they were very frank and honest about what kinds of challenges I might face. I don't know that I fully understood some of their kind of cautionary kind of tales about academia. It took having to actually get into a program and go through it for me to fully understand what I think they were trying to advise me about, and namely that is just, the elitism of academia the ways in which, you know, academia can be limited especially if you're a kind of an activist or committed to social justice and that there are ways that, academia isn't always necessarily the place for that sort of work. Mentorship was so valuable for me individually, and then as I finished my doctorate the mentors I had, helped me just provide that emotional support. Even sometimes it's not even about the nuts and bolts of how do you do research and how do you finish a dissertation? It's simply just supporting you and making you feel like you belong in a space that makes you feel like you don't more often than not. And so just having that community of support was important from mentors. But, there are still too few people of color as more senior professors, a lot of my mentors were my peers who were just a couple of years ahead of me, and I vowed that, as soon as I was in a position that I would be that person who would throw the gate open and keep it open and and support people. But I also approach mentorship in in my own sort of way. I think, I have always tried to be just very transparent with my students about what, the challenges of academia can feel like for a woman of color, for a person of color. I also, I had a child when I was in grad school. So that also created other challenges that other people didn't necessarily have to have. And I, I wanted to be able to, again, to support women who might make choices in graduate school, around, having families or, all of that so mentorship is so vital I think to ensuring that academia continues to be open to alternative voices and particularly folks of color like academia sometimes it's like a long hazing process. I feel like this isn't any different than being in a fraternity or sorority, I feel like, it's all just this huge hazing process. It's not fully transparent about what goes on and nobody really wants to let on. And , that prevents us from moving forward. You get stuck in grad school, you end up not finishing your doctorate and, dropping out or you get a job, but then you can't get tenure. And there's just so much that I feel like is so shrouded in secrecy sometimes about academia and I wanted to be able to be that person if I got through that, I would keep the gate wide open and give folks, as much information as possible and support in, moving forward and through through academia and all of the hoops that, you have to jump to get to a place where I am now. [00:23:24] Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu: Mentorship and activism to me are all so interrelated. When I went to UC Berkeley as an undergrad, and I think you can say this about the UC system as a whole, it's usually an experience of disorientation when you get different kinds of pressures around you saying that your history is unimportant. Your voice is unimportant. Your perspective is unimportant, and this is why ethnic studies exists. And this is why programs like the minority summer research program and various other programs are designed. So as to lift up people who otherwise feel like they don't belong and they don't deserve to study, and they don't deserve the time that is the gift of mentorship. And so I was given the gift of mentorship by so many faculty members who really looked me in the eye and said, what did you make of this material that you read? And to say that, my perspective based on, the knowledge I was learning, the methods I was learning mattered really meant that we could have important places in the world as cultural thinkers, as people who can make an intervention in how we interpret things that we experience. That's what criticism is about. I think a lot about how 88% of critics are white. It means that even the material that we looked at are dissected from such a limited demographic, what a rip off. What would it mean if cultural critics were more diverse, what a robust enriching debate that would be more, and so when a student walks into my office, for the past 20 plus years of teaching, I wanted to share that gift of mentorship to let them know that the university needs their perspective in order for it to do its job. Because if we hear from too few people, then we don't know as much as we should. If it's true that over 90% of the most popular films are made by white men. And it is true, according to the Annenberg Studies at USC and UCLA, then what we know about love, marriage, sexuality, immigration, families more, comes from such a limited place. And it takes away from our understanding of each other. It becomes such a limited imprisoning understanding of each other. If we don't hear from more people, and people who are really critical people who say that, what we shouldn't know, we should know, and the university is a place to dig up those stories. And so for me as a Dean, it's not only about the mentorship I give, but the structures of mentorship that we implement. I think we all need mentors, even for me as a Dean, I have mentors who are Presidents, mentors who are Provosts, so that I have a better understanding of the institution. And I think about this a lot for my, for the faculty in my division. I hope that everyone has a network where you run your ideas by, because you only become stronger for it. You, you have a larger perspective of how institutions work and what your strengths are and then you realize, oh my goodness, all those people who gave me that time. What a big deal that was, that they recognized that you were worth the time that you were worth, the space and the knowledge, and I recognized how good it felt, to be the recipient of that. And then once you start doing it, you realize that. Oh, it's so amazing to be able to give it back, because you're really shaping the next generation. I learned so much from them. That's really the goal for me, not only am I a Dean, but I'm also a grieving mother. And I think a lot about that, about how. All of us are going to confront inevitably, the death of a loved one and so I think about. What our students are doing is really, preparing to have a role in the world that a significant, that really takes advantage of their passion, their strength, their commitment, so that they can, find a purpose that will enable them to get through, this inevitable pain. [00:27:24] Miko Lee: Thank you for sharing that. That really makes me think about your latest film, the Celine Archive, which is such a beautiful personal documentary that, combined so much of your pain and also just uncovering this history of Filipina American. I wonder if you can talk more about what inspired your film. [00:27:45] Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu: So in the mid nineties, 1994, through 1996, I believe around that time the community historian Alex Fabros was teaching a Filipino American history class, Filipino American experience class. There were about 200 students who were going through that curriculum and they found the story that he had grown up with about a Filipino American immigrant woman who was buried alive by her community in the 1930s Stockton Jersey island area. I myself was discovering the story at the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. And I made this film, in the era of the Me Too and Time's Up movements and really wanted to dig deeply into our capacity to suppress the violent experiences that women undergo in our communities. There's so little known and studied about Filipino American history in our curriculum K through 12. And when we do hear about it, we primarily hear men's stories, the late great historian, Dawn Mabalon and talks quite a lot about this and like her and like many other historians and community organizers, cultural workers and the Filipino American community. I wanted to amplify her story. So as to invite us to think about our female past and how Asian American women continue to endure violent silencing we see this, especially, today, not only in the Atlanta shootings, but in the murder of Christina Yuna Lee in New York. [00:29:32] Miko Lee: Can you share a little bit more about how you decided to weave both. Adding this Filipino woman's story into our broader awareness but also weaving in your personal story, sharing a name with the woman who was murdered and your personal story of your tragedy in your family. How did you decide to weave those stories together? [00:29:54] Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu: You know, when people undergo. An unexpected, very sudden death of a loved one, in my case, it was the death of my eight year old son from a common virus that attacked his heart, and in the case of Celine Navarro in the 1930s, she was abducted tortured and punished by her community, supposedly for committing an act of infidelity. Even though she was undergoing violence for quite some time within the community. The death happened, very suddenly her family did not know what had happened or where she was. So when you undergo a sudden and unexpected death, the meaning of your own life, really comes to the, fore. You become, I think, intensely alive because your loved one cannot have their life. So the question then emerges, what do you do with your life? And I had to turn to making the film as an act of creativity in the face of devastation, you know, my own demise because the death of a child. Could really have meant my own death, even though I was still alive. And in the act of filmmaking, you're really bringing together a community, in my case, it's bringing together not only community historians and Filipino-American scholars in the academy, but also my students, I think I opened up a way of speaking with my students that acknowledged, the pain that they also undergo, and it became for us a collective effort of looking into history and I'm making it come alive by becoming close to Celine Navarro's family. So when the articles first came out about her, it became such an affirmation of this unbelievable thing really did happen and we carry it with us. This is something that flows, within multiple generations of her family. And it's a question for me I think that I really think about a lot, like my son was eight, but he had a community, he had a huge impact in our own family about the way, he lived this life. So the question for me was how do you remember someone you love, who died but continues to live almost like in a very physical way, I feel his presence. And so I. Take the love that I continue to feel for my son and use that to make something in this world. I'm so happy to be alive, to be able to make this film. For example, that I can make this gift through the film for Celine Navarro's family, but then also to invite Filipino American women to say, you can be the center of your own story, and that your story is multilayered and it's worth investigation, because of course, what I found out in digging up Celine Navarro's story was that she herself was a very courageous woman who spoke up against domestic violence, that led her to testify against men who were protecting another violent man. I can't even imagine what that was like, and so to be able to pull up that story and to ask the question that began the film where are Filipino women in American history? I wanted to start the movie in that way because I want everyone to care about Filipino women so I wanted that to also be a courageous act that honored the subject of my film. [00:33:21] Miko Lee: Thank you so much. I'm one, just so sorry for the loss of your son. And so appreciative of the fact that you utilize your grief to funnel it into a beautiful work of art. Thank you so much for that [00:33:34] Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu: You're welcome and I also wanted to say, that my new film 80 years later, is about my family on my husband's side. It explores the racial inheritance of Japanese American family incarceration during World War II. As you may know, this year is the 80th anniversary of executive order 9066 that imprisoned 120,000 Japanese Americans, and my film shows. Conversations between survivors and their descendants as they continue to grapple with their legacy and I asked the question, how do we care for our stories? What stories do we feel responsible for carrying or admonishing or living? What is that ongoing legacy and how do we live it? [00:34:23] Miko Lee: Well, I'm looking forward to seeing it. That's very exciting. So much of what you're saying around adding women's stories are hidden stories. How we care for our stories. It reminds me of a Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio talks about this idea of Koana, which is a Hawaiian word for many perspectives that we have all these layers. For so many white Americans, we see all those different layers, but for our people, for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, we don't get the multitude of stories. I'm wondering if you cover some of this in your upcoming book, The Movies of Racial Childhoods: Screaming, Self Sovereignty in Asian America. [00:35:05] Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu: Yes. So my new book that's forthcoming from Duke University Press “The Movies of Racial Childhoods” it's motivated by two very powerful forces that I can't deny. The first is it's a book that really explores who my son would be now, if he were alive, I think about, the independence of one who was in middle childhood, one who is in adolescence, when my son died, I was so stunned by the world that he owned apart from me. When you think about a child, you think, oh, I control what they're exposed to, who they talk to, but when they're in school, they meet so many people and they create their own world. So I found out things that I didn't know, that how he was the judge of handball in the recess, world, so if something happened, he would adjudicate what was fair or unfair. I had no idea that he was doing this, and he had been doing it for years. And when I look at the films that I'm studying, I'm always stunned by, how the subjectivity of people of color are eclipsed. So that's the second motivation of the book is when I think about childhoods, you always think about an innocent kind of white childhood. Oh, they don't work because they're children. But we think about people of color from the beginning they, they work, they enslaved children had to work and they had no right to play for example, when you're looking at the scholarship of, African-American childhoods, so what does it mean to talk about an Asian or Asian American childhood? Like people say, oh, there's going to represent our family. So you're forever a baby, in that vision. But there's also this premature, adultification that co-exists with this intense infantilization and you also see the college admissions process. It's oh, you can't play around because you have to get into an amazing school. Therefore you have to disavow play and you have to become, the future lawyer of America while you're 12, and you can also see this in the, sexualization of youth as well. So I'm trying to figure out, know those two questions. I've just finished the book and hopefully it'll be out next year. [00:37:16] Swati: You are tuned in to APEX Express at 94.1 KPFA and 89.3 KPFB in Berkeley. And online@kpfa.org. [00:37:28] Miko Lee: Dr. Robyn is the academic elitism that you talk about why you founded the Women of Color, Non-binary People of Color Scholars Inclusion Project? [00:37:36] Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: Oh, yeah, absolutely. , I could tell you stories about my experiences of just racism in academia. So WACSIP or the Women of Color Scholars Inclusion Project, it's really a space primarily for those who identify as women of color or non-binary of color, both graduate and faculty. And it's really meant as a safe space for us to be able to convene and support one another. It started off as simply a support group where we could all gather from across campus and all the various places where we are. If you're a woman of color, a non binary, a person of color, the likelihood is that there's just always one or two of you in a particular department or program, and so part of what we wanted to simply do is just get everybody together from across campus, in a space that felt safe where we could literally break bread with one another and be very honest with one another and transparent about what we were struggling with. There is a way that sometimes you feel like you're being gaslighted or you're not really certain that what you've experienced is actually some form of racism or sexism. And sometimes all you need is just, a space where people who have experienced what you've experienced can just affirm that yes, your experience is a real thing and it's not okay and we're here to simply be there as support. We also would organize more formal programs, of course organizing people to come and provide tips and tricks, I guess, to approach teaching and how to, negotiate the challenges of teaching, but especially sometimes the challenges of teaching as women of color. Teaching about race and gender and sexuality as women of color and, contending with sometimes the undermining of our authority as professors in the classroom or by our peers. We'd also organize more formal workshops like that. Writing workshops even, to provide folks with support on publishing because that adage, publish or perish is a very real thing when you're at a major research university, if you do not publish, you cannot secure tenure, you cannot move up in the academic kind of pecking order. So yeah, that was what the intention of the space was, is to create this space of support and it was also to engage as we could in institutional change, trying to document our collective experiences and offer up recommendations to higher ups around shifts that needed to happen to transform institutional culture. That is the piece that was always the struggle. And perhaps what's fed into my frustration with academia, among many other things, but we were successful in providing a space of support for one another. To what extent these groups that I've founded, helped to really shift institutional culture less clear. [00:40:20] Miko Lee: I'm wondering, because WACSIP was has been focused on networking around Critical Race and Ethnic Studies has the anti- CRT fervor that sort of going on by right wing propaganda. Has that impacted your work? [00:40:34] Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: Yeah, I think anti-CRT fervor it's interesting. I don't know, to what extent that actually has impacted my work at the university in the sense that I feel as if academia has been effectively anti-CRT and anti-Ethnic Studies for a very long time. And it doesn't have to be articulated in the ways that the current movement that's engaged primarily at banning CRT in the K through 12 levels, it's never taken that kind of vitriolic kind of tone at the university, but we know it by the failures of investments, in our departments, in faculty of color who do work on race. So we've been dealing with, I feel like I, along with my colleagues who do this sort of work, we've been subject to “anti- CRT” campaigns at the university level for quite some time now. But again, how they've manifested has been in the form of, a failure of investments whether it's we can't get new hires, we can't get funding support for our research, whether we're not being recruited to take leadership positions, how many times have I been in conversation with people administrators who I know barely encounter women who look like me, on the faculty and can never get my name right. Or know who I am at all. This is just what we're contending with. So in some ways, what's happening outside the university doesn't affect us because we've already been under attack certainly it doesn't help us either. [00:42:09] Miko Lee: Dr. Celine You have so many things in the works right now at the same time. How are you balancing all this? [00:42:15] Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu: As Dean, I have to take care of so many people not to take care of the institution, and I think a lot about how there's very few Asian-American women in this role and I think a lot about how, we live such a intensely sexualized, life. There is that force of sexualization that I've felt growing up, throughout my childhood, throughout my early adulthood and as a full grown woman, this intense sexualization, and I don't think that's compatible with our understanding of who is a leader. There's an amazing book by Margaret Chin called “Stuck”, which identifies how very few Asian Americans there are in C-suites, but also in executive leadership roles, but just stunning considering how many Asian-Americans are in these, leading higher ed institutions, but so few of us are leaders of higher ed institutions, right? So it's important, every day to think about how I'm refashioning, what is a popular understanding of what leadership looks like. It is one that is a compassionate and empathetic. And also, how I have to take care of myself through it because you're so in service of others. And I actually go to my own work in order to always remember what is the purpose of my life? What is it that I am protecting in the enterprise of the university, which is, the freedom to inquire. With courage about the most challenging issues of our day, so yeah, it's working out for me, going to my own work, even in the most demanding moments of leadership. It's a reminder, you know what I want to make sure our faculty and students and staff have access to, which is, the excellence of inquiry and debate that is truly available in the university unlike other places, in our world right now you have so many reactionary uneducated, superficial perspectives, but what we do in the university is so special. The seminar is so special where you come into a room and you would have read, material deeply, closely together. You figure out the questions that you have that have been asked by generations before you, you stand on the shoulders of people who have done the work in order to produce your own. There's no greater pleasure. So I'm so happy to be the guardian of that, I'm so happy to lead the arts division that UC Santa Cruz, because that is our enterprise and what's amazing about it is that it produces beautiful work, impactful work, needed work in our world today. I think about empowering every single voice, in our university and to be open, to be surprised by it. And I think the abundance of voice, doesn't just mean the background, that you carry the cultural inheritances that you're trying to grapple with, but it's really also working with people who are different from you, across class, across nation, across region, to see what you can come up with together. And so the students really feel like, oh my God these films are really going to make an impact, and so I think a lot about what we can do on university campuses that really train the next generation of students to be ready for a truly, multiracial world, in 2045, we're going to be a majority people of color country, and so our students need to be educated as, as widely and broadly as possible not only in terms of what they know, but also how they take care of themselves. And we're doing so much here. That's so exciting we're saying these are the people who are coming to this campus and trying to figure out their voices, trying to learn their craft. And what we're going to do is to give them a space in order to get. share their experiences, whether it's with policing or prison abolition, the university is a place where we can do all of that. [00:46:11] Miko Lee: Robyn, I've heard you talk about being a people's professor. Can you share what that means? [00:46:17] Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: Sure for me, people's professor it means that the university pays me, but I work for my community. And what that means is that I have always seen my work, whether it's my research and scholarship, you know what I decide to research who I'm writing for when I do, when I write what I teach, how I teach it what I do, but recognizing kind of the stature that comes with being a university, professor, all of my research, my teaching, how I move in the world is driven by and rooted in my community organizing and activist commitments. It comes out of my personal interest, true, but I've been very attuned, always to the issues that emerge in the organizing spaces that I am part of. I've always been a member of a community organization wherever I've been. So I have commitments, it's not simply that I have my ear on the ground and I see issues that pop up in the media. I have commitments, I'm part of the community, I joined organizations, I know what our communities are grappling with and all of that is always shaped my research agenda and found its way in my teaching. That's what I mean by people's professor that, my allegiance is not to the university, my allegiance is not even to my career and advancing my career. It's really to, using my skills, using my training, using my platform to advance the work of social justice. I think that's the role I feel like I want to play. That's why I entered academia to begin with. [00:48:00] Miko Lee: So your next iteration of the people's professor after you leave UC Davis next year, will be the School for Liberating Education. [00:48:09] Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: The School for Liberating Education is quite simply a platform that allows anybody in the community to be able to access Ethic Studies knowledge, I think it's just so vital and healing and transformative to take Ethnic Studies courses. And yet, as you mentioned earlier, we are under attack. We've had many important Ethnic Studies victories, but there've been sufficiently forces who've managed to water down the kind of curriculum that many of us who fought for Ethnic Studies and continue to fight for Ethics Studies really want. And so among the things that the pandemic offered us is new kinds of technologies to connect virtually and, I myself, was taking virtual courses as part of my own healing process in the wake of the loss of my son in August of 2020. And it occurred to me that, these courses were amazing for my own healing journey and that I could possibly use these same platforms that were helping me to be able to offer Ethnic Studies to a broader audience of folks, especially in a context where Ethnic Studies or CRT was being viciously attacked. So yeah, that's really what it started off as, and in its first phase it's been a series of online courses first in, Asian American studies, which is really in my wheelhouse, and in Filipinx Studies specifically, I'd like to expand even more of the offerings that dive deep into the Chicanx experience and Latinx experience the Black experience, Native studies, Native and Indigenous studies and interracial kind of examinations as well, just in terms of the online courses. I guess the 2.0 version of this School for Liberating Education is the courses that I'm hoping to offer here on site at the new farm that we've just purchased. We want to be able to host intensive learning retreats and kind of educational workshops that center land-based and Indigenous knowledges. So in other words, either doing in-person short courses that are somewhat based on the current offering of courses online or extensions of them or just kind of new courses. There's a lot of new work in advancing healing justice that I also want to help to organize and curate here at the farm. Definitely want to center these land based and Indigenous knowledges and I'm super excited about the possibilities of what I can do as a people's professor outside of the space of academia outside of also the space of, the politics of it all and here. We're just at the beginnings of setting up the farm proper we're beginning to break ground because we have some seeds in the ground. I have my Hmong father and mother-in-law are helping us and already passing on generations of wisdom about the land and how to till the land and how to, just be in community with the land, just, in the work that they've been doing and helping us to cultivate it, but yeah, this is the next phase and I'm just really excited about the possibilities for learning that I can extend, but also for myself, I don't see myself as only being the professor actually in this space. I see myself more as an organizer and a curator who has some knowledge to impart, but also as somebody who can gathered together other people with other forms of expertise. [00:51:27] Miko Lee: It's a combination of a lot of your wheelhouse, a lot of your strengths as an educator and doing cross solidarity work and bringing in this sense of connecting to the land and healing and wellness. It's very beautiful. I'm looking forward to learning more and we will post a link to School for Liberating Education in the show notes for APEX Express. You spoke about healing and wellness. And I know 2020 was a really hard year and I am so sorry for the loss of your son. I really appreciate how you are turning that just tragic loss into a powerful foundation. Can you speak about the foundation and what that's all about? [00:52:08] Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: Yeah. Absolutely. I'm still struggling. The healing process is ongoing for me. And people often talk about how there are different kinds of losses one can experience, and I've experienced a lot of those kinds of losses. I've lost a dear grandparent, my grandmother who helped raise me, I've lost a parent. I lost my father in 2014. And all of those losses, hurt in deep ways, of course, but there is something acute about the loss of a child. And though, he was a young man so full of promise though, just at the young age of 22 to have lost his life. And the foundation is an opportunity for me to ensure that his legacy and everything that he was so passionate about and that he lived and fought and died for lives on. And, so the Amado Khaya Foundation is meant to be a space that will support the causes that , was so passionate about. Clearly indigenous people's struggles, that's where he spent the last few months of his life, he was serving the Magguangan and Maduro in the wake of terrible typhoons that had hit the island. He was also very passionate about Ethnic Studies, that was an issue he was very involved in before leaving for the Philippines. He was passionate about housing justice. He really came of his own as a community organizer and activist. And I want to just ensure that, the work that he started can continue, but I also want to center mental health and wellness in the work that Amado Khaya does because he really acutely understood the ways that community organizers and activists hold the collective trauma of our people. His father who I am no longer with, was an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa. Had really experienced the violence of the apartheid regime was witness to the violent clashes between activists and the police and the state, and that had a major impact on Amado's father. And deep mental health impacts that Amado recognized, so that's something I really want to also center in the Amado Khaya Foundation is not just continuing to support the organizations or the issues he fought for, but to support the mental health and wellness of organizers themselves, who are doing all this great work and kind of providing them the support and care that they also really require to continue the work of social justice and among the things that we've we've done through Amado Khaya, we're still finishing up our 501c3 process. But we have a home that we purchased in honor of Amado called Amado's Kaia, which translates into Amado is home. Kaia actually also means home in Zulu. But we have a home that we offer as a gift to organizers as a sanctuary refuge for rest. We've been able to get some grants and in the process of setting up a digital media lab, Amado was a aspiring filmmaker. So we want to be able to also use media film in particular, which was what he was passionate about, and video as a way of also supporting activists causes. Part of what I'm also hoping that Amado Khaya does , and this is what the connection comes back to the school, I'm very inspired by Grace Lee Boggs, so Re-Imagination Lab is the social enterprise that holds all of my kind of entrepreneurial initiatives and the idea is that we want to get to a place where we generate a surplus revenue that we would reinvest into Amado Khaya, other non-profits. Somebody who's worked in alongside nonprofits we know how much our, a nonprofit organizations struggle to hustle for funding. And they're often beholden to foundations, that, oftentimes relate to non-profits in what amounts to a very colonized and very white supremacist, relationship and which constrain the kind of work that nonprofit organizations can do in service of the community. And so I want to be able to get to a place where Amado Khaya will either draw sufficient donations from individuals or revenues from Re-Imagination Lab so that we can help fund movements without constraints so they can do the work that they need to do without any limitation. I think that there are a lot of us who are trying to figure out how do we redistribute resources in our community and not have to be beholden to foundations that may very well be responsible for creating the very problems that nonprofits are forced to have to address. [00:56:56] Miko Lee: Dr Robyn, the people's professor. Thank you so much. Dr. Celine thank you both for turning your grief into positive action and thank you for just continuing to share your work with by and for the broader community. I really appreciate what you're doing. [00:57:12] Miko Lee: Please check out our website, kpfa.org backslash program, backslash apex express to find out more about the show tonight and to find out how you can take direct action. We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating and sharing your visions with the world. Your voices are important. Apex express is produced by Miko Lee Jalena Keane-Lee and Paige Chung and special editing by Swati Rayasam. Thank you so much to the KPFA staff for their support have a great night. The post APEX Express – 11.3.22 – A Tale of 2 Professors appeared first on KPFA.
Growing up in a Mexican household in San Diego, California, Berkeley student Alexa Carrillo Espinoza says there was always dancing in her home. She'd always wanted to try ballet folklórico, a traditional Mexican dance, but never had the chance. So, when she saw Ballet Folklórico Reflejos de Mexico tabling on Sproul Plaza as a first-year student in 2019, she signed up right away. "As I dance, I have this overwhelming sense of pride," she says. Listen to the episode, see photos and read the transcript on Berkeley News. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This episode is part of a series put together by Cleo Woelfle-Erskine and July Hazard to ask “what is queer ecology?” of climate scientists, ecologists, choreographers, poets, and creatives who each share unique perspectives on how queer and trans identities can and do play important roles in shifting the way we think about the sciences and our relations with the more-than-human. This project is part of Woelfle-Erskine and Hazard’s 2019-2020 Centrum Northwest Heritage residencies, made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts. In Part 1, Michelle Hagewood sits down with these creative folks to learn more about what brought them to this work, what it means to them, and what the past couple of years have looked like in their work, play, and pandemic-affected lives. We learn a bit of what we have to look forward to in the interviews that will follow. Cleo Woelfle-Erskine is a Seattle-based artist-scholar whose work includes photography, video, street theater, and scientific investigation as participatory performance. Cleo’s scientific collaborations with tribes and grassroots groups investigate projects to restore rivers and coastal zones to benefit salmon and recharge groundwater to adapt to changing climates, and have been funded by the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center and the National Science Foundation. Cleo is the author, most recently, of “Fishy Pleasures: Unsettling fish hatching and fish catching on Pacific frontiers” (Imaginations 2019) and the forthcoming monograph Underflows: Transfiguring Rivers, Queering Ecology (UW Press). July Hazard is a poet from Kentucky who’s currently in Seattle, with parts left behind in a long list of cities, rivers, and truck stops on the way. July’s current research investigates the altered shorelines of the Black and Duwamish rivers, the assembly of poetic voice under the guidance of animals, and the forest relations of trans and queer youth in rural Appalachia. July teaches in the University of Washington’s Comparative History of Ideas Department and Program on the Environment. Together, they collaborate with other artists, scientists, and activists to investigate hidden flows and suppressed ways of being, and to evoke new relations among people and the more-than-human world. Often, these collaborations form uprisings of an ever-shifting art & science collective called the Water Underground. Their shared work has been seen at venues ranging from derelict rail yards and street protests to museums and science conferences—including SomARTS, CounterPulse, the Crocker Museum, and the Henry Art Gallery, the Wild and Scenic Film Festival, and the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival, the Bay Delta Science Conference, on Sproul Plaza during Occupy Berkeley, and wheat-pasted around Oakland, California. Their performance installation “Tell A Salmon Your Troubles” won the inaugural Making and Doing Prize at the 2015 Society for the Social
Beginning with his hilarious recap of the notorious “Rosencopter” defeat to Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts, and continuing with his evocative portrayal of the tension between future Hall of Famer Brett Favre and head coach Brad Childress during the Minnesota Vikings’ 2009 season, Sage entertains us with behind-the-scenes anecdotes and insights, at one point describing “the best throw I’ve ever seen in the sport of football.” He then pivots into a political discussion that excoriates Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and other right-wing zealots--likening the ex-President’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection to that of a coach giving a fiery pregame speech--and explores the possibility of him holding higher office. We also hear the story of Natalie’s arresting question to her father while she was in the middle of a charged protest on UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza and he was charging toward the Super Bowl party he was co-hosting in Houston.
Subscribe to the podcast: Apple, Sticher, TuneIn, Overcast , Spotify. Private Feed.Marketing Bs is going “premium” on October 19th. Following that date premium subscribers will receive four issues per week (essay, briefing and podcasts). Free subscribers will continue to receive Marketing BS on Fridays with one piece of content from the week. Subscriptions are half price until October 16th as a thank you to my longtime subscribers. You can subscribe here. Thank you to everyone who has already subscribed.TranscriptEdward: My guest is Wendy White. Today, we cover Wendy's career and path to CMO—Berkeley, the US military, Intel, Microsoft, Tier 3, Surge. Wendy is now the chief marketing executive at Egencia, Expedia's corporate travel arm. We are lucky to have her here today. Wendy, in 2011, you were running marketing operations at Microsoft when you moved to tier three to be their chief marketing executive. How did you get that role? How did you move from running marketing operations to running all of the marketing?Wendy: That's a great question. How does anyone make that upward leap in their career? And maybe I should say leap like off a cliff because I was at Microsoft—an amazing company, great job, and I loved what I was doing. Funny enough, I got a DM on Twitter from somebody in my network that said, “Hey, would you consider having a conversation with the CEO of this company?” Who knew a DM on Twitter could change your life? But for me it did. I feel like I actually stood on the edge of a cliff and jumped off because going from helping run advertising operations for—probably at the time—a company that had the largest advertising budget in the world, to a small Series A startup and being the chief marketing executive there was a massive change.Edward: Why would they hire you? I'm sure you are great at marketing operations, but why did they consider you to run everything?Wendy: Well, I wasn't really a marketing operations person. The advertising operations at Microsoft were negotiating the advertising strategy across all the business units, running advertising, and execution everywhere outside of the core US ad development. So it was a pretty traditional marketing job, not technically an operations job. But what I had at that point was a career where I had executed across a variety of marketing skill sets.I think to be a chief marketing officer of any size company, you really got to understand the dynamics of all areas of marketing, and I had done that over my career. I had just enough expertise to be dangerous at everything, and I guess maybe enough humility to say, okay, I'm going to come in and figure this out and write out, no, I'm going to ask for help. That was attractive.Edward: How did you get those skills? Was that a serial? Did you switch from job to job and do each division, or is it a matter of you sitting next to people who knew those skills and you got it through osmosis?Wendy: It was a little bit of both. Mostly to that point, I'd worked at big companies at Intel and Motorola. But doing a variety of things is also working. At Intel, I worked in a division that was a brand-new division, and because of that, we had to grow the marketing as we grew that division. I had to do everything for a while. I was Jack-of-all-trades. I just think I had enough Jack-of-all-trades jobs over the years where I just picked up enough. But also, when you become the VP of marketing, head of marketing, CMO at a startup company, even if you don't know it all when you start, I guarantee by the end of the six months, you've figured it all out. You've tapped into your VC network to ask for best practices from other companies in that VC network. Or you've reached out to friends of yours and your network and said, please give me a crash course in Marketo overnight, so I know what the hell I'm doing. That's exactly what I did.Edward: I want to go back and talk about the path that got you there. You went to college at Berkeley. How did you come out of Berkeley different from the way you went in?Wendy: Life-changing. Absolute life-changing. I remember the first time I walked onto Sproul Plaza, which is like the big Plaza. If you've ever seen pictures of Berkeley with the beautiful iron gates—the scrollwork iron gate—you walk through that gate and you're in the Sproul Plaza.I remember the first time I walked into Sproul Plaza, and I was a very innocent young woman from Minnesota. I had just come off of a couple of years of active duty in the army, was now in college at Berkeley, walked straight into my first protest on something that was happening in China. Probably something around Tiananmen Square at that time. And I just thought, I don't even know what's going on. I didn't really have a worldview to understand what was happening in China. I think like many young people that go to university, your worldview expands. I think going to a place like Berkeley, that is true like on steroids. My worldview really expanded there. I went from always being a young democrat in Minnesota and really interested in Minnesota politics, to just having maybe a way deeper understanding of progressive politics and social justice. Also, just the realities of life lived in Berkeley, a lot of homelessness at that time. So I just went from being very protected to way better understanding of my place in the world.Edward: Do you think you would have got that at a different school? If you had gone to a regional school instead of Berkeley, would you have come out similar, or do you think that Berkeley itself changed you?Wendy: Berkeley—especially those periods, maybe even today—is a unique place. I feel really lucky to have experienced it. I think there are many other schools and universities that would have given me something similar, but there's this little secret something that is Berkeley that I'm not quite sure I'm tangibly explaining, that is indelibly part of who I am now.Edward: You started your career with the US Army. Tell me about the decision-making process that got you there.Wendy: When you ask this question, I always want to sound like I have a really great answer like I was so smart at 17, and I made all these great life choices. But really, what happened is I got in a fight with my parents. My older brother, who I blamed to this day for this. He was one year ahead of me in school, had made the decision to stay at home and commute to the University of Minnesota. We were about 20 miles away, and he moved into my parents' basement and that was his college experience.It was probably perfect for him, but to me, it sounded like the absolute worst college experience possible. My parents' proposal was you stay home, live in your childhood bedroom, and get in the car with your brother every day and drive to the University of Minnesota and go to school. I have an adventurous spirit. And I think being in travel now is a perfect place for me because it reflects my desire to see the world and experience and be a part of the world. Which is also ties into that Berkeley experience.So I think my parents were quite shocked when right around this time, I got a call from a recruiter and I said, hey, no way. I'm practically a 4.0 student, I'm going someplace amazing. And they talked me into, would you consider language school? Would you consider the army and living in California for a year? And I'm like, wait a minute. I would consider that. And I did, and I don't regret it for a moment.Edward: You worked in psychological operations. Is that the Army's word for marketing?Wendy: If marketing equals propaganda, then you bet. Yes. Psychological operations—for those who are not familiar—are the folks that take the loudspeakers and surround somebody's home, like the Noriega example, drop leaflets from airplanes, or take over radio stations or TV stations in a given [...] with the local populace. There are all kinds of things that psychological operations do, probably in this day and age, and I haven't stayed as close to it. Social media is one of the ways that maybe some of our competitors do it, but for us back in the day, it was very much governed by a set of ideas and principles. But it was very much psychological preparation of the battlefield, which was audience analysis, and then what do you want that audience to do? What behaviors do you want them to do? And how do you get them to do that with the channels that we had? So very much marketing.Edward: Did that skill set help when you moved into business? Do you still use it today?Wendy: Yeah. I got my first really cool marketing job at Intel because the chief communications officer heard about that. Called me up and asked me to come into a meeting with her in a small conference room. Challenged me to tell her about it, and then said, “Okay, I want you to work for me.” That's how I ended up in my first marketing job at Intel after I'd been at Intel for about six or eight months working on a business project. That's how I ended up in PR.Edward: That's where I was going to go to next because after your MBA, you did join Intel and you focus on B2B marketing. Was B2B marketing a thing you were shooting for, or it just happened?Wendy: Interestingly, my mother was an executive Control Data back in the day. I don't know if anybody remembers that company, but it was one of the original computer server companies. My brother and his best friend was the grandson of the founder of that company. I grew up with computers in my house from the time I was very small.My brother and I saved up, bought our first computer—TRS-80—when it first came out, and we always were upgrading computers. I was very into technology, grew up in that environment, and loved tech. When I got done with grad school and had the opportunity to go to Intel, I jumped at it because there was no company more than Intel (at the time) that was shaping the world as it relates to technology. I loved that experience, and I was really happy to go there.Edward: If 20 years ago, someone from the future went back in time and said in 2020, the US will be initiating antitrust action against four of the five largest tech companies and Microsoft is not one of those companies, I think most people would assume that the Redmond company had stumbled out of the top five. But they were actually number two at the time, and yet they avoided antitrust action.When you were at Microsoft, you led the global initiative to position Microsoft against antitrust risk. Talk a little bit about how marketing deregulators in governments are different from normal B2B marketing.Wendy: That's the most left-field job I've ever had in my career, and also another one that was super engaging and fun. During my first year at Microsoft, I had the opportunity to work in the antitrust division. They had, of course, just come through pretty significant actions with both the US regulators and the European regulators, and had some obligations under those decrees that they had to enforce. Which was around proving the interoperability of their products so they wouldn't get further fine for antitrust for combining things like Windows and Office.I did the marketing around the compliance issues. How do we promote the interoperability protocols to developers around the world? But more importantly, I had to work in some really fascinating, fun stuff like Microsoft support for Linux. Who would have guessed back in those days that was a big initiative at Microsoft? But it was. It was building bridges to open-source products, working with the open-source ecosystem, and promoting the open-source ecosystem. And then also donating a bunch of IP into what turned into the Microsoft foundation and a spin-off that they did.But I also got to work on standards, and how do you talk to regulatory bodies and regulators about standards to ensure openness of products? How do you influence governments around the world? Again, a really great foundational thing for marketers to understand is the environment in which you're marketing, including the regulatory environment and how to think about audiences and their perceptions at all levels. I learned a lot about research through that job. I learned a lot about influence models either direct through lobbying efforts or indirectly through software ecosystem efforts. It was a great role.Edward: It seems like a lot of the stuff you do is product-based. Do these things and that's going to help you against the regulators or reduce your risk against regulators. And then part of it is figuring out what actually does influence a regulator. I imagine that it's a different country by country.Wendy: It's a very different country by country, and I think you can even see it today. Fast forward where we are today and you can look at the Nordic countries versus Germany versus even France. They all have different personalities for those countries.Germany is all about privacy. France is all about the social protection of its citizens. The Nordic's halfway in between both. So yes, every country has a different personality. If you're going to be a global marketer, you should really understand the environment that you're operating in. How to think about marketing, not only to your buyers but to the governments that influence how your products are bought and sold.Edward: How do you get in front of those regulators? How do you influence them? Is it mass marketing? It's almost like sales where you have individual people? You're giving them marketing sales tools to go and talk to the regulators the way you'd sell to enterprise sales?Wendy: Yeah. Microsoft, they had a body of folks called National Technology Officers. You could think of them as super sophisticated, smart, pseudo-salespeople that call the regulators to explain to them technology, to influence their technology decisions, and to influence the regulations. A company like Microsoft clearly needed that.I think all large companies need folks that help explain policy and technology to the regulators. I mean, you've seen that. You've watched probably one or two of the regulatory issues happening here where you have executives testifying in front of Congress and the questions that get asked. A lot of regulators and legislators need to understand technology better.Edward: Wendy, what were your biggest failure points in your career? Where did things not go as expected?Wendy: Over the years, I really learned that in any business, the people that work with you and for you at the heart of how you lead and manage, how you get work done, how you create a culture in a company. And any time I think back to where I think I failed, it's always fundamentally about making sure that I was putting people first versus mission first, or understanding motivations or the right collaboration points.I could come up with any number of times that a project has failed because we took the wrong hypothesis or bet, but I liked those. I liked both failing and learning. It's when you've failed to really engage in and bring your employees along, that's where I consider that a true failure. For me, that's a leadership failure, and that's what I really learn from.Edward: Let's go back and see when one of those events did not happen. How would things have been different? What did you learn from those events that caused you to change?Wendy: I look now at my interactions with my current staff and the teams that work for me. The things that I've learned from those who have really impacted the way that I lead teams now. I can't say I wish they wouldn't have happened or that things would have been different because each one of us is a combination of all of our experiences. I'm hoping that all of those things have led me to be a much better leader today and a more empathetic leader.Edward: Wendy, you've had an amazingly successful career. What do you attribute to your productivity? Is there anything that you do that most people don't?Wendy: I'm an Energizer bunny, which I think is hilarious and maybe too much of a workaholic. I try not to role model that. I think for me being intellectually curious is important. One of the other things that have led me to be at the right moment at the right time or make the right decision is how much I read and stay on top of what's happening in the markets that I operate in. Reading my competitors, reading the industry news, and reading the influencers. That's one of the levers that makes an executive successful is having the right context in which to make decisions. That for me is one of the points I feel that's really helped me be successful.Edward: So it's a combination of both reading a lot and also just working a lot. How do you get the energy to actually do that? Is it just genetic? Or do you have any techniques that you've used to keep yourself going?Wendy: Well, they must be a little genetic because I look at my mom and I think I'm a real chip off the old block when it comes to my mom. My mom is 75 and she's still a senior vice president of a company, sales and marketing, and works four days a week. There you go. There must be some genetics there.If you work in an area that you love, if you really love the work, you love the content of the work, you love the team, the culture, and seeing the outcomes, I think, it's really easy to be passionate about it and to work hard at it. You've got that real integration of work and life. Of course, I have things outside of work I'm interested in. Believe it or not, like defining one that I'm super interested in the last six months is painting. I've become obsessed with paint by numbers. I have art all over my house now that I painted myself. It's paint by numbers, but it's still fun and I love it. So who knows?Edward: I'm going to leave it at that. Wendy, thank you so much. We'll continue this tomorrow when we dive into Egencia. Thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com
Perchè solo in questo periodo moderno parliamo di diversity e storicamente abbiamo iniziato da poco a parlare di diversità generazionale?Un piccolo viaggio nel tempo ci aiuta a conoscere l'inizio della "lotta" tra generazioni, partendo dalla Sproul Plaza di Berkeley e l'inizio del movimento Free Speech Movement sulla libertà di espressione.Approfondimenti:https://www.ilpost.it/2014/10/05/mario-savio/----------------FOLLOW ME ! --------------------------------------Website: www.thatsy.net Telegram: https://t.me/thatsy Youtube: https://bit.ly/2XK8rna IG: https://www.instagram.com/thatsy_podcast FB: https://www.facebook.com/ThatSyouth Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giulioberonia
What do you think of a smart rabbit at collage? Many colleges allow students to keep fish in small tanks in their dorm rooms. It’s a lot more uncommon to find a college that allows more interactive pets to live with student owners. For students who feel they need a four-legged companion while they’re away at school, we have a link in the show notes to 15 pet friendly colleges. There are five reasons why you should own a rabbit: 1) The cost. Are you aware that the cost of owning a rabbit is less than owning a cat or a dog? To own a dog or a cat costs roughly $2,000 a year! That's a lot of bones. A rabbit, depending on how much you spoil it, costs roughly $400 a year. So having a rabbit even works within the most meager of college student budgets, and you still get your "warm and fuzzy" cuddle fix. 2) Their cuteness level. How can you say no to a fuzzy, cute little rabbit face? When you look up cute animals on Google, rabbits heavily dominate the internet cuteness category. Everything they do is cute no matter what. Rabbits are pretty kawaii! 3) Their social and friendly personalities. Not only are they great with people, they love hanging out with animal buddies. 4) The variety of the breeds. From the biggest Flemish Giant to smallest Netherland Dwarf, rabbits come in all shapes, colors and sizes. 5) Last but not least, you have a friend for life! Rabbits live up to 14 years and will be your buddy through all those years College students leaving the comfort and familiarity of home for the first time can experience a lonely and stressful transition, but a small number of schools across the nation are making this potentially difficult period easier by allowing students to bring their beloved pets to reside with them on campus. Schools such as MIT, Eckerd College, University of Washington and Stephens College have designated pet-friendly dorms where students can cohabitate with their furry family members. Upon seeing the success of these programs, the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) in Greeley launched a pet-friendly housing program in the fall of 2014. For UNC, the stakes for success are high. Enrollment is down, the university has lost 1,000 students in the past five years, and the university is looking for new ways to attract and retain students. Jenni Brundage, assistant director of Apartment Life and Operations, expects the program to be a great recruitment and retention tool: There is already a waiting list, and the university may add additional floors next year. Americans have not only embraced the Shultz dictum that happiness is a warm puppy: They’re applying it to warm rabbits, kangaroo rats, pot-bellied pigs, cockatiels and ferrets. And for that matter, to decidedly tepid ball pythons, Cuban rock iguanas and Chilean rose hair tarantulas. The issue here isn’t the type of beastie; it’s that animals equate to happiness, whether you’re at home, in the workplace, or in the stressful milieu that is the modern academy. An increasing number of students believe they benefit from having pets for emotional support or comfort. And those with diagnosed mental health problems—including anxiety, panic attacks and depression—are asserting their right to keep them in university residences at campuses such as UC Berkeley. Although counseling or psychiatric care may be necessary to address these real and growing needs, pets can be a valuable adjunct for restoring the emotional equilibrium of troubled students. Some of the evidence for this is simply empirical: Who hasn’t felt better stroking a furry cat or feeding a carrot to an equable equine? Though still relatively scant, there is scientific evidence for the positive effects of animal propinquity. A recent article in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, for instance, concluded that “animal-assisted intervention” may prove a good complementary therapy option for trauma. Nobody claims the dorms are evolving into petting zoos. But animals are gaining a toehold (clawhold?) in Cal residences. Which is all well and good if you’re cool with critters in general—but what if you’re afraid of dogs, allergic to cat dander, or freaked out by snakes, even the benign non-venomous kind? Is the French lop rabbit down the hall just the camel’s nose under the tent, a harbinger that the residences will soon teem with—well, camels? Probably not. Berkeley allow animals in the residences under guidelines established by two laws, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Fair Housing Act. But the criteria for each are fairly explicit. “The Americans with Disabilities Act covers people with psychological disabilities, and only authorizes dogs and in some cases, miniature horses,” says Aaron Cohen, a staff psychologist for Berkeley’s residential and student service programs. “And the animals must also be trained to respond to specific patient needs. For example, they can alert patients who’ve missed their medications. Or a dog could be trained to put its head in the lap of a patient with bipolar disorder who’s on the verge of a manic episode.” By contrast, emotional support animals, covered by the Fair Housing Act, can be any species, says Cohen. “You’d require a diagnosis (from a qualified professional) of your condition and documentation establishing that it would be difficult for you to live in a stable and comfortable fashion in the residences without your animal,” says Cohen. “But the animal doesn’t have to be trained to perform a specific task.” That doesn’t mean the animals are accorded carte blanche to act like utter animals, however. They are expected to conform to the same rules applied to human residents: No biting or mauling, spitting venom or defecating in hallways, let alone blasting music at 3:00 am in accompaniment to a beer pong tournament. Adam Ratliff, Cal’s critical communications manager, emailed California that “If the animal’s and owner’s behavior becomes a nuisance or danger to other community members (e.g., noise, lack of waste pick-up etc.) then we do contact students to help mitigate the community impact.” One freshman at Washington State University was allowed to bring a 95-pound pig into her dorm—and, because the pig refused to use the stairs and was stressed out by the freight elevator, wound up staying in the second-floor dorm room and using a litter box. “The other students thought the pig was kind of cool, “ Hannah Mitchell, the dorm’s residential director at the time, told The New York Times, “but less cool when it began to smell.” It’s easy to poke fun at the idea of housing swine or alpacas or Komodo dragons in the dorms, but as Ratliff indicates, requests are generally for more compact pets—felines, small dogs, and perhaps rabbits, guinea pigs or white rats. Since the beginning of this school year, he continued, the university has approved all documented requests for both service and emotional support animals: 33 so far. All are either dogs or cats, wrote Ratliff, adding, “The type of animal does not impact our process or review.” For some students, the university can be a bleak and lonely place, and that seems especially the case for top, highly competitive institutions. According to the American College Health Association, almost a third of students found themselves so depressed at some point during 2014 that they couldn’t function. Around 15 percent of Cal students used campus counseling services last year, up from 10 percent five years ago; at UCLA, that figure has spiked to 20 percent. Throughout the UC system, student demand for mental health services has jumped 37 percent in the last six years. As a way to reduce overall student stress, Berkeley’s University Health Services has partnered with Tony LaRussa’s Animal Rescue Foundation (ARF) to bring pups to Sproul Plaza once a month, with bonus visits during finals. These “Pet Hugs” events are open to all passersby, and very popular. “Cal is a highly competitive campus of 37,000 students and we at UHS are always looking for ways to help students manage their stress levels,” the health services website explains. “Petting an ARF dog offers instant stress relief.” Cohen says he first heard of emotional support animals in 2004, “so that’s a long time to have a conversation about the subject.” And even now, he says, evaluation guidelines are not deeply detailed. “It’s easier to determine (qualifications) if you’re looking at psychological disability rather than emotional support,” he says. So is there potential for abuse? Can someone who is in every way well-adjusted and anxiety-free bring a kitty cat to the dorms just because he or she really, really likes cats? Of course, says Cohen. “But there’s the potential for abuse in many areas, and I really haven’t seen much of it in our system,” he says. “Emotional support animals are gaining acceptance. Even on the airlines, anyone can bring an emotional support animal for a fee, though I recall an incident where a guy with a huge pig was walked off a plane. It’s a balancing act. We need to maintain guidelines, but we also want to support students. Further, it’s the law. Under the Americans with Disabilities and Fair Housing Acts, service and support animals must be accommodated if there is documentation of need.” In Berkeley’s dorms, no one seems to be getting in much of a lather about the issue. The general attitude seems to be: As long as no roommate is allergic or otherwise severely stressed by our four-footed (or six-or-eight-footed), winged, finned or scaled planetary associates, bring ‘em on. Some students told California that a good alternative might be a separate floor for animal owners, or a “pet place” where the animals could be housed and visited regularly. “I think (students) should be able to have emotional support animals because Berkeley is a stressful place,” says Danny Chera, a freshman majoring in microbial biology. “Animals are a way of getting away from reality and kind of having something close to them. I have tons of pets at home, dogs, fish, birds. They keep me sane. I would love to have them here. I think it would help me a lot.” Even undergrads who aren’t wildly enthusiastic about the emotional support concept generally are supportive. “I personally would not want to have a pet,” says Hosefa Basrai, a freshman in pre-business. “Woofing would make me uncomfortable, especially at night. (But) I think if they need it, they should have them.” As for critics who complain that comfort animals are infantilizing students? Dorm residents apparently beg to differ. “You could be 30 years old and still want the support of animals,” says Chera, “because the bond you can share with animals you can’t really get with people. Everybody deserves whatever they need to cope.” How Pets Came to the University of Northern Colorado Exactly why did UNC create the program? “We allow our live-in staff members to have pets, and a lot of students asked for pets themselves,” Brundage says. “We were getting an increasing number of applications for students to live with emotional support or therapy pets. There is a lot of off-campus housing that allows pets, and piloting this program opens the door for more students with pets to live on campus.” My practice, Sheep Draw Veterinary Hospital, serves as veterinary advisor for the program. In essence, we are the first line of care if the university has concerns about the care of the students’ pets. The hospital also provides education to students and staff about pet wellness and cares for many of the pets as patients. As a veterinarian, I was particularly curious about how this would work once the program began. Student with cat Student Sarah Hammer finds her cat, Robin, to be a great support. When Dr. Merideth Early, a colleague at Sheep Draw who is also president of the Weld County Veterinary Medical Association, sat on an advisory panel for the program at its inception, she says she was impressed with the level of care and responsibility demonstrated by the university. “The staff and students were interested in my input about making this a good experience for everybody. They really thought about everything, including not using the elevators so that students who have allergies won’t be affected by pet hair or dander in the elevator.” (Another way the school protects students with allergies: Laundry facilities have designated certain washers and dryers for the pet community. Everybody is free to use them, but the signs help pet-allergic students avoid contaminated machines.) Putting the Program Into Action The pet program encompasses the second and third floors of Lawrenson Hall, an imposing 16-story building in the middle of UNC’s campus. Students live in two-bedroom, apartment-style suites; there is a maximum of two animals per apartment. Each apartment has a sign outside the door with a picture of a dog or a cat and a number indicating how many of each pet is in the apartment. (This signage helps the UNC police department, facilities and maintenance staff know the type and number of critters to expect if they need to enter the premises.) For now, the only pets in the program are cats and small dogs, none of whom weigh more than 40 pounds. The pets must stay in the apartments at all times, unless they’re coming or going from the dorm. It’s recommended — but not required— that pets be housebroken or litterbox trained. What’s more, all pets must be spayed or neutered, vaccinated against rabies, be registered in Weld County and be on a leash when out on campus. Finally, students are required to buy liability insurance, which costs about $15 a month. Lawrenson Hall UNC's Lawrenson Hall has two floors that are pet friendly. A Tour of the Pet-Friendly Residences To see how the program is progressing, we took a midsemester tour with Corey Friend, director of Lawrenson Hall.Friendis a pet lover himself and lives in the dorm with his dog, Kirby, a tiny, happy,fluff ball mix of Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and Bichon Frise. Our first impression was that the pet-friendly hallways smelled clean — kind of like cranberries. Not one stray animal hair or piece of poo was spotted: Even the gated gravel outdoor dog run and elimination area was spotless. “Some of the other hall directors are jealous because they think the pet-friendly floors smell better than the pet-free ones,” Friend says about the cleanliness. “The students are very good about cleaning up after their dogs: They know that if there is a problem, they could be asked to leave the program. Our custodial staff cleans this area as well.” What Students Are Saying On the tour, we met Lawrenson resident senior Sarah Hammer and her rescue cat, Robin. Hammer is studying English with a minor in history, and her story is interesting in that it highlights the unconventional way this program is helping people succeed. She considers Robin a therapy cat. “Back in 2013 I was having a really hard time, so I got a cat, and she really helped me, made me feel like life was worth living again.” Overall, the program is going very well, according to Hammer. “The only time I heard a bunch of dogs barking and freaking out was during the fire drill, which is understandable. I think there is more community because we have to work together to make it successful.” Student with cat at UNC Morgan Monroe was thrilled that she could take her 17-year-old family cat, Bootsie, to school with her. Colorado native Morgan Monroe is another cat-loving participant in the program. She lived in Lawrenson last year. When she first went away to college, her parents cared for her 17-year-old feline, Bootsie, who experienced depression without Monroe and the cat had to go on medication. So when Monroe heard about the program, she signed up right away. “I am so happy to have Bootsie with me. I love him,” she says as she fusses over the furry senior citizen. “Everybody makes fun of me because I talk about my cat on a regular basis,” she says with a laugh. “He is like a family member. He is the unofficial mascot of my sorority, because on Tuesday nights we have dinner in the apartment and he hangs out with everyone.” So Far, So Good As far as dealing with issues with aggression or house-training, Brundage says, “We honestly haven’t had to cross that bridge yet, but the plan is to deal with issues on a case-by-case basis. The students are taking this privilege very seriously and are active advocates for this community.” When asked how they ensure that the pets aren’t abandoned at the end of a semester or left unattended for an unreasonable amount of time in the dorms, she explains, “We do have an overnight policy: If a student is going to be absent overnight, we require a pet sitter, which could be a roommate, and we require that all pets are taken home for winter break. Most of the pets come from home and are family pets, so this hasn’t been an issue yet. Again, part of the purpose of this community is teaching students how to be responsible pet owners, and responsibility doesn’t stop with the end of the term.” UNC will promote the groundbreaking program at the regional college housing conference in November. If the enthusiasm of the staff and student participants and those on the waiting list is any indication, this program will continue to grow in popularity, and we may see similar programs extend to other universities. If you’re in the market for an untraditional pet that’s still dorm-sized, here are some things that you should know about bunnies before you adopt. 1. Energizer Bunny You can’t just keep bunnies in a cage all day long. If they’re in a confined space for too long, they’ll get super wiry and start to act out. If you have an open cage, they may even attempt (and eventually succeed) to escape and get into things they shouldn’t. If you’re not home most of the day, I would recommend getting a cage with a playpen area on it, so the bunny is able to have more space. But when you are home, make sure to let them have some free roaming and exploring time. 2. Everything’s a Chew Toy Bunnies have super sharp teeth, and they need to keep them filed down, so they’ll chew on whatever they come across. Some bunnies are better than others, but when the hoppy child is exploring the house, make sure to hide all of your chargers and wires, because they’ll snap them in half with one bite. They’ll also chew on carpeting, wood and blinds, so I recommend having them confined to areas of the house where they’ll cause the least destruction, or, if that is unavoidable, keep a close eye on them while they’re out of their cage. 3. Vet Problems Yes, just like cats and dogs, bunnies need to go to the vet regularly, but many vets lack experience with rabbits. The carrot crunchers are super prone to getting cancers, especially reproductive ones, so make sure you get them fixed ASAP if they aren’t already, as doing so can extend their lives by years. If you choose not to get them fixed, don’t anticipate your rabbit living for more than three-to-five years. If you do get your furry friend snipped, they can have the life expectancy of cats and dogs, sometimes even longer, depending on the breed. 4. Tricks Are for Rabbits Rabbits can be trained to do almost anything. Litter training can be difficult before they’re fixed, but with some work, it can be done, to the point where they’ll do their business in the same corner of their cage/litter box each time. Aside from litter training, you can teach your two-eared friend commands just like you would a dog. Some respond to her name and “no,” and she can beg and “stay” for a short amount of time. They’re pretty smart animals. 5. Hidden Figures Bunnies can take a while to adjust and open up to you. Don’t be surprised if they hide in their cage for the first few days after bringing them home. If you end up moving at some point, do not be surprised if they repeat the behavior again. The bewhiskered breeders feel vulnerable in unfamiliar areas, and they’ll take a while to realize it’s safe and that they can start exploring their new area. Same goes for their owners. They’ll typically warm up to one or two people rather than the whole family. If there are younger kids in the house, they’ll typically stay away from them as well. 6. Territorial by Nature Rabbits can be very territorial and temperamental. If they’re in their space chilling and don’t want to be bothered, they’ll let you know. If you approach them, don’t be surprised if they growl and charge at you. If you ignore that, don’t be surprised if you get bit. Their moods can change instantly—one minute you can be petting them and giving them all your love, and the next they’ll want to be left alone. Don’t be surprised if they growl and charge you while you’re trying to feed them as well; if you try to remove their food bowl, they get super mad, and if you reach into their space, they may think you’re trying to pick them up (which they hate, FYI), so they’ll try to defend themselves. Eventually, they’ll know you’re not trying to hurt them, but to avoid such violent behavior, try to make sure the same people interact and feed them on a regular basis. If a stranger tries to care for them, the bunny will flip out and possibly attack, which will stress everyone out. If you go on a vacation, make sure the caretaker is introduced to your pet beforehand. 7. Eat Like a Rabbit These Easter mascots eat more than carrots. A typical diet is a small amount of rabbit feed each day, along with plenty of hay. Most foods have dried veggies in them, which are crucial to their health and make a nice snack. Fresh fruits and veggies also make great treats. Avoid iceberg lettuce though, because too much can be harmful to their diet, whereas blueberries, bananas, apples (minus the core and skin), yogurt and basil make great treats. 8. Bone Up on Bunnies Though this is general information, there are many different rabbit breeds, and they come in all shapes and sizes, so it’s best to know which breeds will work best for you. Some rabbits will grow to be the size of cats, while others will only grow to be a few pounds. Get to know a little bit about each breed before you visit the shelter, so you know you won’t be bringing home the wrong rabbit. Though bunnies take a lot of work, with some of your time, patience and love, they can become your best friend and an amazing pet. College Pets https://www.collegeraptor.com/find-colleges/articles/student-life/20-pet-friendly-college-campuses/ Rabbits, the College Girl's Best Friend: 5 Reasons Why You Should Own a Rabbit https://www.hercampus.com/school/cal-poly/rabbits-college-girls-best-friend-5-reasons-why-you-should-own-rabbit Pet Therapy: Students Increasingly Bringing “Emotional Support” Animals to College https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-in/2015-11-10/pet-therapy-students-increasingly-bringing-emotional-support Are Pet-Friendly Dorms Working? http://www.vetstreet.com/our-pet-experts/are-pet-friendly-dorms-working Why Rabbits May Be the Perfect College Pet https://studybreaks.com/2017/05/10/rabbits/ Word of the Week: Romp! The Young Man who was Saved by a Rabbit and a Fox. http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/ne/al/al48.htm (Passamaquoddy.) There dwelt a couple in the woods, far away from other people,--a man and his wife. They had one boy, who grew up strong and clever. One day he said, "Father and mother, let me go and see other men and women." They grieved, but let him go. He went afar. All night he lay on the ground. In the morning he heard something coming. He rose and saw it was a Rabbit, who said, "Ha, friend, where go you?" The boy answered, "To find people." "That is what I want," replied the Rabbit. "Let us go together." So they went on for a long time, till they heard voices far off, and walking quietly came to a village. "Now," said the Rabbit, "steal up unseen, and listen to them!" The boy did so, and heard the people saying that a kewahqu', a cannibal monster, was to come the next day to devour the daughter of their sagamore. And having returned and reported this to the Rabbit, the latter said to the boy, "Have no fear; go to the people and tell them that you can save her." He did so, but it was long before they would listen to him. Yet at last it came to the ears of the old chief that a strange young man insisted that he could save the girl; so the chief sent for him, and said, "They tell me that you think you can deliver my daughter from death. Do so, and she shall be yours." Then he returned to the Rabbit, who said, "They did not send the girl far away because they know that the demon can follow any track. But I hope to make a track which he cannot follow. Now do you, as soon as it shall be dark, bring her to this place." The young man did so, and the Rabbit was there with a sled, and in his hand he had two squirrels. These he smoothed down, and as he did so they grew to be as large as the largest sled-dogs. Then all three went headlong, like the wind, till they came to another village. The Rabbit looked about till he found a certain wigwam, and then peered through a crevice into it. "This is the place," he said. "Enter." They did so; then the Rabbit ran away. They found in the cabin an old woman, who was very kind, but who, on seeing them, burst into tears. "Ah, my dear grandchildren," she cried, "your death is following you rapidly, for the kewahqu' is on your track, and will soon be here. But run down to the river, where you will find your grandfather camping." They went, and were joined by the Rabbit, who had spent the time in making many divergent tracks in the ground. The kewahqu' came. The tracks delayed him a long time, but at last he found the right one. Meanwhile the young couple went on, and found an old man by the river. He said, "Truly you are in great danger, for the kewahqu' is coming. But I will help you." Saying this, he threw himself into the water, where he floated with outstretched limbs, and said, "Now, my children, get on me." The girl feared lest she should fall off, but being reassured mounted, when he turned into a canoe, which carried them safely across. But when they turned to look at him, he was no longer a canoe, but an old Duck. "Now, my dear children," he said, "hasten to the top of yonder old mountain, high among the gray rocks. There you will find your friend." They fled to the old gray mountain. The kewahqu' came raging and roaring in a fury, but however he pursued they were at the foot of the precipice before him. There stood the Rabbit. He was holding up a very long pole; no pine was ever longer. "Climb this," he said. And, as they climbed, it lengthened, till they left it for the hill, and then scrambled up the rocks. Then the kewahqu' came yelling and howling horribly. Seeing the fugitives far above, he swarmed up the pole. With him, too, it grew, and grew rapidly, till it seemed to be half a mile high. Now the kewahqu' was no such sorcerer that he could fly; neither had he wings; he must remain on the pole; and when he came to the top the young man pushed it afar. It fell, and the monster was killed by the fall thereof. They went with the squirrel-sledge; they flew through the woods on the snow by the moonlight; they were very glad. And at last they came to the girl's village, when the Rabbit said, "Now, friend, good-by. Yet there is more trouble coming, and when it is with you I and mine will aid you. So farewell." And when they were home again it all appeared like a dream. Then the wedding feast was held, and all seemed well. But the young men of the village hated the youth, and desired to kill him, that they might take his wife. They persuaded him to go with them fishing on the sea. Then they raised a cry, and said, "A whale is chasing us! he is under the canoe!" and suddenly they knocked him overboard, and paddled away like an arrow in flight. The young man called for help. A Crow came, and said, "Swim or float as long as you can. I will bring you aid." He floated a long time. The Crow returned with a strong cord; the Crow made himself very large; he threw one end of the cord to the youth; by the other he towed him to a small island. "I can do no more," he said; "but there is another friend." So as the youth sat there, starving and freezing, there came to him a Fox. "Ha, friend," he said, "are you here?" "Yes," replied the youth, "and dying of hunger." The Fox reflected an instant, and said, Truly I have no meat; and yet there is a way." So he picked from the ground a blade of dry grass, and bade the youth eat it. He did so, and found himself a moose (or a horse). Then he fed richly on the young grass till he had enough, when the Fox gave him a second straw, and he became a man again. "Friend," said the Fox, "there is an Indian village on the main-land, where there is to be a great feast, a grand dance. Would you like to be there?" "Indeed I would," replied the youth. "Then wait till dark, and I will take you there," said the Fox. And when night came he bade the youth close his eyes and enter the river, and take hold of the end of his tail, while he should draw. So in the tossing sea they, went on for hours. Thought the youth, "We shall never get there." Said the Fox, "Yes, we will, but keep your eyes shut." So it went on for another hour, when the youth thought again, "We shall never reach land." Said the Fox, "Yes, we shall." However, after a time he opened his eyes, when they were only ten feet from the shore, and this cost them more time and trouble than all the previous swim even they had the beach under foot. It was his own village. The festival was for the marriage of his own wife to one of the young men who had pushed him overboard. Great was his magic power, great was his anger; he became strong as death. Then he went to his own wigwam, and his wife, seeing him, cried aloud for joy, and kissed him and wept all at once. He said, "Be glad, but the hour of punishment for the men who made these tears is come." So he went to the sagamore and told him all. The old chief called for the young men. "Slay them all as you choose," he said to his son-in-law; "scalp them." But the youth refused. He called to the Fox, and got the straws which gave the power to transform men to beasts. He changed his enemies into bad animals,--one into a porcupine, one into a hog,--and they were driven into the woods. Thus it was that the first hog and the first porcupine came into the world. This story, narrated by Tomah Josephs, is partly old Indian and partly European, but whether the latter element was derived from a French Canadian or a Norse source I cannot tell, since it is common to both. The mention of the horse and the bog, or of cattle, does not prove that a story is not pre-Columbian. The Norsemen had brought cattle of various descriptions even to New England. It is to be very much regretted that the first settlers in New England took no pains to ascertain what the Indians knew of the white men who had preceded them. But modern material may have easily been added to an old legend. The terms grandchildren, grandmother, etc., do not here signify actual relationship, but only friendship between elderly and young people. © Copyrighted
Dale McCollough of UCB and Wayne Linklater of Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand discuss a survey of wild animals in El Cerrito and Kensington, CA that McCullough and K. Jennings did in 1995 and 98. Linklater and J. Benson repeated the survey in 2010.TranscriptSpeaker 1: [inaudible].Speaker 2: [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program with news events and interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists. My name is Brad Swift. Today's interview is with Dale McCullough and Wayne Linklater. They're both researchers of large wild mammals. Del Macola is a professor Ameritas at the environmental science and Policy Management Department of the College [00:01:00] of natural resources at UC Berkeley. Wayne link ladder is a senior lecturer in the school of biological sciences at Victoria, University of Wellington in New Zealand. We talk about their research in wild animals in urban settings, specifically a survey of deer and other wild animals in El Sorito and Kensington, the Dale Macola and Kathleen Jennings first completed in 1995 and again in 1998 Wayne link ladder [00:01:30] and Jeffrey Benson repeated the survey in 2010 a summary report of the surveys can be downloaded from Wayne's website. Wayne's website address is really long, so if you would like it, send us an email and we'll pass it along to you. Our address is spectrum dot k a l ex@yahoo.com. This interview is prerecorded and edited. Speaker 3: We're joined by Dale McCullough and Wayne Linklater. [00:02:00] And Dale, why don't you tell us about yourself and where you're currently positioned at UC? I know that you're a professor Ameritus, which is Speaker 4: Professor Ameritus. Yes. Which means I am retired and ordinary person's language and I retired in 2004. Most of the things I did at UC Berkeley had have wound down and hadn't been done. But I've continued to do research on several projects that I've been interested in. So I'm have been [00:02:30] continuing research on Kangaroos and outback Australia and leopards and tigers and far east Russia and seek a deer throughout Southeast Asia. Speaker 3: Great. And Wayne? Well, I'm a wildlife biologist from New Zealand, from Victoria University, in fact that the, it's quite a handle, but at the scene provide a of est in restoration ecology at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand and like daylight. My history is full of work on, on large mammals to [00:03:00] exciting places and phd students working in Malaysia and India on elephants and in, uh, South Africa. On Rhinoceros. What brings me here is my growing interest in the relationships between people and Wildlife, which is why I came and did a sabbatical here for six months in 2008, 2009 the year in which we replicated, um, some work that we'd done in Wellington looking at people's relationships with wildlife in their backyard. [00:03:30] So is that when you and Dale hooked up on this wildlife survey that you've done in the El Cerrito and Kensington hills or just, I guess it's the entire, it's all of Kensington and all of El Sorito. That's right, yes. What happened was that Dale pointed out a phd thesis to me from Kathleen Genie and it immediately put to my interest, I contacted Kathleen and she had done the survey in the mid 1990s with Dale's a advice [00:04:00] and I saw a really quite exciting opportunity to replicate their work 10 years later. But Dale knows better how that Sioux, they evolved in the first place. Speaker 4: Yeah. It happened sort of accidentally in the deer population and in the East Bay was building up and becoming a problem and people were going to city councils and places like that and complaining and I live in Kensington and [00:04:30] the deer, my neighborhood had gone up so I could are going to have dinner and sit out on the deck in the evening and guarantee that there'd be going up and down the street. And then I thought, well, Geez, here I get on airplanes and fly off to Japan and Taiwan and Vietnam and so on to, to study there and I don't even know what these deer out in my street are doing. And so I decided, well, we better do a biological study of them to find out how they are behaving in the urban area [00:05:00] and how that compares with what they do in the wild. Speaker 4: And so we started, started out with the, uh, survey to get some sort of background. It's, it's hard to apply a lot of the methods that we use in the wild to an urban situation because the high density of people and particularly in, in, uh, in places like Kensington and El Serita where the traditional law is very small and houses very big. That was the motivation. And so we did the, uh, [00:05:30] the first survey, um, on a random systematic random sample. So it covered a certain area, these two cities. And uh, and then we repeated it in 1998 because we, from our work, we're seeing something of a decline in the number of deer. And we wanted to see if that was what was happening across these, these two, uh, communities. And in general, it was [00:06:00] a lot, it was mainly in the areas on the higher parts of the hill. And just to sort of anticipate the deer continued to go down and were low levels. And one of the things that is peaked our interest recently is there is evidence that the deer are starting to build up again. And so Wayne's interest fit right into, well if we're going to have another in increase in deer [00:06:30] then it would be really good to be able to document that. And so, um, the, the, the timing from my point of view was perfect. Speaker 3: And Wayne, with your current survey, you're picking up the laurels of this, uh, this research and so I don't have, we don't have the facility to repeat the biology on the ground and unfortunately we'd love to but we don't. But what we can do is a use this EC ground information already gathered by Kathleen Jennings [00:07:00] and Dale to look at with the pictures changed for the people in the 10 12 years since the last survey in 1998 and in particular, I'm very interested in as a seed the relationship between people and wildlife and what does, what replicating a survey like this enables us to do is to try and build a relationship or understand the relationship between people's beliefs or attitudes about wildlife in this case, deer and [00:07:30] the presence of dia themselves and how that changes over time. The reason we're interested in that is because these days when it comes to managing wildlife, understanding how to manage the problem with wildlife, data's the people in the equation is becoming more important. Speaker 3: So it's very important to understand how are people's attitudes and beliefs change? How dynamic are they to external influences like the density of d or or, [00:08:00] or um, experience and uh, so living around the deer that's right for a longer period of time, increased tolerance or not oh, not and actually understanding that that dynamic is important for managers who need to prioritize in a landscape that's full of people whose, uh, relationship with a deer is variously extremely negative to extremely positive. It's a very challenging environment to work in. I mean, he manages to, they hear out at the sort of problem, but if we [00:08:30] could add a social dimension to this map wildlife management problem, we might be some of the wider, resolving some of those issues. I think. Is there any way within the survey to try to take account of the management of the area? Is there an overlaid management in the El Sorito Kensington area or is there really no public policy or is and, Speaker 4: uh, a management system in most, I mean, you know, the, the way deer populations are traditionally controlled [00:09:00] is through hunting. And obviously you can't have hunting in this situation, but in places like Kensington and El Serita, you just, you can take an animal maybe under extraordinary circumstances, but the hazard is just too great. Speaker 3: Well, does, does trapping become a solution or is that Speaker 4: it's very, very expensive and hard to do and people think contraception, well again, if you have animals in captivity or that sort [00:09:30] of thing, contraception works great, but unfree and roaming animals is very expensive. It just won't work. So literally there is no, no good solution. And you know, again, to refer to the Monterey Peninsula where we have this longer record, people get excited, you know, and they, they finally get enough information to see that there's really not much that can be done. And by that time the deer start going down on their own and people forget [00:10:00] about the problem and 15 years later Speaker 3: back comes back again. Yeah. One of the other interesting parts of that original survey too was that all day the deer at concentrated toward the upland, the penetration to the El Sorito down near the bat, it's actually quite deep. Although in low numbers they actually get right down there and to very high density, high traffic areas. Basically they go down pillars Speaker 4: too much concrete, you know, and not enough deer habitat. Right. But if there's any [00:10:30] residential neighborhood with the typical local gardens and some on their there, they were on Albany Hill. Yeah, they went clear down to the bay. Were any place that there was suitable habitat that they were there? Yeah. Speaker 3: And Wayne would the current survey and then hopefully you're going to try to continue this project. Do you need to get funding for it or how will you maintain? Well, fortunately the sort of work doesn't require large amounts of funding. I shouldn't say that publicly [00:11:00] because of course we're always after funding, but, but unfortunately, this sort of work can be data rich without large amounts of funding because we were primarily interested in people's observations and their opinions. And in a topic like this, uh, people are actually very forthcoming and very helpful for some reason. Uh, most sorts of surveys have very low response rate. So I think people fear, feel harassed and harried by surveys, political surveys, commercial surveys. But [00:11:30] when it comes to wildlife, the seems to attract people's interest and, and, um, most everyone has an opinion on wildlife in their, in their locality. Speaker 3: And so fortunately, uh, we get very high response rates, which we're very grateful for for the sort of survey. So, um, the resources required to undertake a survey, a fairly rudimentary, which actually makes it possible to do this sort of work over the long term with some confidence. So I, I think depending on the outcomes of this one, [00:12:00] we'll almost certainly repeat it. I'd be very interested in knowing how our, uh, deer and other wildlife disperse through this landscape. What are the barriers and triggers to that widespread movement? I suspect that there are elements of the urban landscape that actually landscape architects and urban designers plan for other reasons. The deer and other wildlife I find very useful for moving about the landscape. [00:12:30] These corridors that I mentioned, for example, when people count sell land anymore under [inaudible]. So, uh, electric was our, um, these, these, my function is very important corridors for wildlife movement through the landscape, uh, in fact may be making the urban landscape much more permeable than it used to be. Speaker 5: [inaudible] [00:13:00] you're listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley. Today we're talking with Wayne Linklater and Dale Macola about wild animals, urban sentence. [inaudible] Speaker 4: so you're really focused on deer because they were the past, so to speak. Well, that's what we focused [00:13:30] on, but you know, rod also keeping a very pretty close watch on what was going on with pay odis because they were one of the predators. And again, I'm not familiar with what coyotes are doing right now, but they were coming down through that Mosher corridor clear down to the middle school down there. Uh, and, uh, you know, we had some evidence that mountain lines were, you know, on the verge of coming in one case where it probably [00:14:00] was a mountain lion, it came down below Arlington Avenue and of course a that recent mountain lion, you know, Jason White, Shaddock Shaddock Avenue, I think Shotokan Cedar. And uh, so it's a problem with the disparate young dispersing animals meanly. You know, these aren't mountain lions that have territories that overlap. It. Speaker 4: It usually when we see animals like that, they're, they're young [00:14:30] animals that are dispersing and trying to find a territory where they can, they can live. And I, and of course these, uh, sere make awfully good meals and of course we worry about an attack on a person. You know, that, right? That's the, the big concern because it, in each case, the probability is very, very low, but enough cases and then, you know, eventually will become inevitable that there [00:15:00] will be some attack and then all the wheels will come off because there would be zero tolerance for that. So then that would reintroduce hunting. Well you can't hunt here. So it would be hard to do any kind of control. That's what makes this so difficult is uh, the, the sort of example we have is down, uh, on the Monterey peninsula where the deer have periodically [00:15:30] gone up and gone down again for reasons that we don't really understand. Speaker 4: We know it's not direct mortality, it's failure and success of reproduction, not the attempt to reproduce, but that the fond doesn't survive for reasons that we don't understand, but they've gone up and down on like a 15 to 18 year time period. So my [00:16:00] expectation is that these deer may show some sort of similar pattern. Eventually we may figure out why. And like I say, just over the last year or so, there are the signs that the deer are starting to come up. So peaked in 1995 already started going down. They went down very, very gradually. Our radio collared animals, you know, live, normal lifespans and very gradually disappeared just like [00:16:30] you would, you would expect. What is that life span? How long? Well, the urban area, uh, the equivalent of 70 would probably be about 12 or 13 years for deer and, but you know, some humans live to be a hundred, so occasionally you're gonna probably get a 16 or 17 year old, uh, deer. And then again in the urban area where the hazards aren't that great. Interestingly, the animal that was the radio animal that [00:17:00] we had that lived along this time died in a yard right across the street from the yard where we captured it. Speaker 4: You could easily toss the rock, the spot where we captured it to where it went to its final resting. It goes back to that really small range that you were talking about in hotspots for food because of gardening and also fruit trees, [00:17:30] which isn't major attracted when, when there's fruit in the falls. Speaker 5: [inaudible] you're listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley. Today we're talking with [inaudible] and Dale McCullough about wild animals and urban sex. [inaudible] Speaker 4: [00:18:00] just, uh, you know, just the recent illustration of what we're talking about, who I know, the biology of the animals, they, uh, have had some problems with deer attacks, quote on people. Also down near the the food ghetto. I was contacted indirectly by one of the graduate students in, in the [00:18:30] department here who is working with, uh, a city official on that. And I said, well, I don't, I don't know what's going on, but my guess is that people are walking dogs and it's females with Fonz that are attacking because in the wild they recognize that dog is a coyote or so on. Well, it turns out that is exactly what the situation was when they talked about it a bit. But see, just having that little [00:19:00] clue about, you know, the biology of the animal and how those interactions work puts that whole problem into a different context. Speaker 3: Piece of information. Like that immediately informs because suddenly the options are a, the biological control of her mother, Dia. But also this becomes an information management problem, doesn't it? Because for most people, when they understand that the steer is acting in defense, they'll change the [00:19:30] behavior, but that information becomes a way of managing the problem by changing people's behavior rather than potentially the cost of managing a deer population. Right. Wildlife feeding is a classic example of this, isn't it? Where in places where the feeding of wildlife becomes a problem, the wildlife come in, they come in at last dean's states, they lose their fear of people. They immediately become more dangerous. Just that piece of information [00:20:00] and some sort of social marketing campaign to inform people that actually the magnitude of the problem, that feeling causes is sometimes often enough, enough to reduce the magnitude of the problem. People change their behavior. It also empowers people and it empowers management agencies in ways that other sorts of solutions, which grant all sorts of controls. He don't [inaudible]. Speaker 4: Yeah. The thing is it, it sensitizes people. So if you say you shouldn't be feeding them, you shouldn't be taming them. That's dangerous. [00:20:30] You should be a little afraid of the deer and the deer should be a little afraid of you. And then there are homeless nerve problems. But if the deer totally becomes on afraid, that's when the problem comes in. And most wildlife problems are of that kind. So like where there've been cases, coyotes if attack children, it's in cases where people have been feeding them, they've completely lost their fear. And the other thing, as you can tell people, you should reinforce if, if you approach the deer [00:21:00] and, and they don't go, go away, you know, get your darn broom or whatever you have, you know, but just make that deer get outta there to establish the fact that it is still not running the place. [inaudible] Speaker 3: if we take a step back and, and think about, uh, relationships between wildlife and people in urban landscapes, one of the really interesting parts of that context to me is that this year the world's urban population just tipped 50%. [00:21:30] The world's population just took 50% of than most people in the world now live in urban areas. They live in, in areas which should depauperate of wildlife and wilderness. It's really interesting to me to try and understand what the implications of that are for the future of wildlife conservation and wilderness conservation. Because increasingly the world is going to depend on people making decisions who [00:22:00] no longer have contact with wilderness or wildlife anymore. The way that our grandparents did for instance, and other academics have talked about this idea of extinction of experience. So the voting populous in North America for instance, are going to be less and less ecologically or environmentally literate with time. The more open eyes they become, it makes you wonder, doesn't it? Hair important. Therefore, relationships with wildlife in urban areas might [00:22:30] become for facilitating this relationship with wilderness. So that's one of the things that gets me interested in in urban landscapes and these urban things like DNA. So let me just say thank you very much for your time in talking about this with us. You're most welcome Speaker 5: [inaudible] [00:23:00] [inaudible], Speaker 2: [00:23:30] a regular feature of spectrum's dimension, few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. The science at cow lecture for May is associate Professor Neil Seuss. We from the Department of Environmental Science Policy and management at the College of natural resources. The lecture will be May 21st at 11:00 AM in the genetics and plant biology building room 100 he will be talking about extreme sociality, super colonies of the invasive [00:24:00] Argentine ant with the end of the semester days away. Here's an on campus resource you may find helpful. Reuse. Reuse is a student run program dedicated to promoting the reuse of materials on the UC Berkeley campus. They promote reuse by providing spaces for the campus community to freely exchange reusable goods. The reuse stations consist of shelving units placed in buildings where campus members donate and pick up reusable materials [00:24:30] to learn where the stations are located. Visit their website, reuse.berkeley.edu for those with bigger items or specific needs. Speaker 2: Reuse now sponsors an online forum for exchanging things. The forum address is exchange.berkeley.edu you do need to have a berkeley.edu email address to use the forum Thursday May 12th his bike to work day at UC Berkeley on bike to work day. [00:25:00] UC Berkeley will host an energizer station in Sproul Plaza from 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM I have no idea what an energizer station is. If you have a bike and you need help fixing it or maintaining it, there are at least two groups on campus ready to help citizens cycle and by cy cow. Both have free sessions to repair bikes and hopefully teach you how to maintain your bike. Citizens Cycle has two free clinics a week in front of the East Asian library. The Monday clinic is held [00:25:30] from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM and the Friday clinic is from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM citizens cycle is a voluntary student group. Buy Cycle has free repair three days a week. Speaker 2: Monday 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM Wednesday 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM Friday 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM their website is buy-side cow, B I c y c a l.com. The free repair [00:26:00] sessions are held just behind the Golden Bear cafe at Sproul Plaza by cycle is a student funded cooperative. Two news items of note. This first news story was derived from the UC Berkeley News Center story by Sarah Yang in early April, 2011 energy secretary Steven Chu announced grants totaling 112 point $5 million of funding over five years to support the development of advanced solar photovoltaic [00:26:30] related manufacturing processes throughout the United States. The Energy Department's sunshot advanced manufacturing partnerships will help the solar power industry overcome technical barriers and reduce for photo-voltaic installations. A local outgrowth of this sunshot funding is the bay area photovoltaics consortium jointly led by the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University. The consortium will receive [00:27:00] $25 million spread over five years. Industry sources will provide $1 million annually to the consortium budget. Speaker 2: The Bay area photovoltaics consortium will fund competitive grants through a process open to all universities, national laboratories and research institutions. The consortium seeks to spur research and development of new materials and manufacturing processes that will cut the cost significantly, increased production volume and improve the performance [00:27:30] of solar cells and devices. Ali's Javi, UC Berkeley, associate professor of electrical engineering and co-director of the consortium addressed their goals by saying the cost of solar energy in 2010 was about $3 and 40 cents per watt of power installed. Our end goal is to decrease that cost to $1 per watt installed. Our collaboration with industry will be critical in achieving this goal. We are fortunate that the bay area is home to such a high density of photo-voltaic related [00:28:00] companies. Cal Green Fund grants for 2011 were announced at the eighth annual UC Berkeley Sustainability Summit. April 19th the grants were awarded to Christopher carbuncle at the UC botanical garden. Josh Mendell College of letters and science. Elizabeth Chan of the energy and Resources Class one nine zero any Gordon and Paris Yacht Chakrabarti at the UC Berkeley compost alliance and frank you [00:28:30] at UC residents hall assembly Speaker 5: [inaudible] can use occurred during the show is from an Austin, a David album titled Volker and [00:29:00] [inaudible]. Thank you for listening to spectrum. We are happy to hear from our listeners. If you have comments about the show or we'd like to link to Wayne Linklater's website, which you can download the El Cerrito Kensington wild animal survey, send us an email or an email address is spectrum dot k a l s@yahoo.com [00:29:30] join us in two weeks at the same time. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Dale McCollough of UCB and Wayne Linklater of Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand discuss a survey of wild animals in El Cerrito and Kensington, CA that McCullough and K. Jennings did in 1995 and 98. Linklater and J. Benson repeated the survey in 2010.TranscriptSpeaker 1: [inaudible].Speaker 2: [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program with news events and interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists. My name is Brad Swift. Today's interview is with Dale McCullough and Wayne Linklater. They're both researchers of large wild mammals. Del Macola is a professor Ameritas at the environmental science and Policy Management Department of the College [00:01:00] of natural resources at UC Berkeley. Wayne link ladder is a senior lecturer in the school of biological sciences at Victoria, University of Wellington in New Zealand. We talk about their research in wild animals in urban settings, specifically a survey of deer and other wild animals in El Sorito and Kensington, the Dale Macola and Kathleen Jennings first completed in 1995 and again in 1998 Wayne link ladder [00:01:30] and Jeffrey Benson repeated the survey in 2010 a summary report of the surveys can be downloaded from Wayne's website. Wayne's website address is really long, so if you would like it, send us an email and we'll pass it along to you. Our address is spectrum dot k a l ex@yahoo.com. This interview is prerecorded and edited. Speaker 3: We're joined by Dale McCullough and Wayne Linklater. [00:02:00] And Dale, why don't you tell us about yourself and where you're currently positioned at UC? I know that you're a professor Ameritus, which is Speaker 4: Professor Ameritus. Yes. Which means I am retired and ordinary person's language and I retired in 2004. Most of the things I did at UC Berkeley had have wound down and hadn't been done. But I've continued to do research on several projects that I've been interested in. So I'm have been [00:02:30] continuing research on Kangaroos and outback Australia and leopards and tigers and far east Russia and seek a deer throughout Southeast Asia. Speaker 3: Great. And Wayne? Well, I'm a wildlife biologist from New Zealand, from Victoria University, in fact that the, it's quite a handle, but at the scene provide a of est in restoration ecology at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand and like daylight. My history is full of work on, on large mammals to [00:03:00] exciting places and phd students working in Malaysia and India on elephants and in, uh, South Africa. On Rhinoceros. What brings me here is my growing interest in the relationships between people and Wildlife, which is why I came and did a sabbatical here for six months in 2008, 2009 the year in which we replicated, um, some work that we'd done in Wellington looking at people's relationships with wildlife in their backyard. [00:03:30] So is that when you and Dale hooked up on this wildlife survey that you've done in the El Cerrito and Kensington hills or just, I guess it's the entire, it's all of Kensington and all of El Sorito. That's right, yes. What happened was that Dale pointed out a phd thesis to me from Kathleen Genie and it immediately put to my interest, I contacted Kathleen and she had done the survey in the mid 1990s with Dale's a advice [00:04:00] and I saw a really quite exciting opportunity to replicate their work 10 years later. But Dale knows better how that Sioux, they evolved in the first place. Speaker 4: Yeah. It happened sort of accidentally in the deer population and in the East Bay was building up and becoming a problem and people were going to city councils and places like that and complaining and I live in Kensington and [00:04:30] the deer, my neighborhood had gone up so I could are going to have dinner and sit out on the deck in the evening and guarantee that there'd be going up and down the street. And then I thought, well, Geez, here I get on airplanes and fly off to Japan and Taiwan and Vietnam and so on to, to study there and I don't even know what these deer out in my street are doing. And so I decided, well, we better do a biological study of them to find out how they are behaving in the urban area [00:05:00] and how that compares with what they do in the wild. Speaker 4: And so we started, started out with the, uh, survey to get some sort of background. It's, it's hard to apply a lot of the methods that we use in the wild to an urban situation because the high density of people and particularly in, in, uh, in places like Kensington and El Serita where the traditional law is very small and houses very big. That was the motivation. And so we did the, uh, [00:05:30] the first survey, um, on a random systematic random sample. So it covered a certain area, these two cities. And uh, and then we repeated it in 1998 because we, from our work, we're seeing something of a decline in the number of deer. And we wanted to see if that was what was happening across these, these two, uh, communities. And in general, it was [00:06:00] a lot, it was mainly in the areas on the higher parts of the hill. And just to sort of anticipate the deer continued to go down and were low levels. And one of the things that is peaked our interest recently is there is evidence that the deer are starting to build up again. And so Wayne's interest fit right into, well if we're going to have another in increase in deer [00:06:30] then it would be really good to be able to document that. And so, um, the, the, the timing from my point of view was perfect. Speaker 3: And Wayne, with your current survey, you're picking up the laurels of this, uh, this research and so I don't have, we don't have the facility to repeat the biology on the ground and unfortunately we'd love to but we don't. But what we can do is a use this EC ground information already gathered by Kathleen Jennings [00:07:00] and Dale to look at with the pictures changed for the people in the 10 12 years since the last survey in 1998 and in particular, I'm very interested in as a seed the relationship between people and wildlife and what does, what replicating a survey like this enables us to do is to try and build a relationship or understand the relationship between people's beliefs or attitudes about wildlife in this case, deer and [00:07:30] the presence of dia themselves and how that changes over time. The reason we're interested in that is because these days when it comes to managing wildlife, understanding how to manage the problem with wildlife, data's the people in the equation is becoming more important. Speaker 3: So it's very important to understand how are people's attitudes and beliefs change? How dynamic are they to external influences like the density of d or or, [00:08:00] or um, experience and uh, so living around the deer that's right for a longer period of time, increased tolerance or not oh, not and actually understanding that that dynamic is important for managers who need to prioritize in a landscape that's full of people whose, uh, relationship with a deer is variously extremely negative to extremely positive. It's a very challenging environment to work in. I mean, he manages to, they hear out at the sort of problem, but if we [00:08:30] could add a social dimension to this map wildlife management problem, we might be some of the wider, resolving some of those issues. I think. Is there any way within the survey to try to take account of the management of the area? Is there an overlaid management in the El Sorito Kensington area or is there really no public policy or is and, Speaker 4: uh, a management system in most, I mean, you know, the, the way deer populations are traditionally controlled [00:09:00] is through hunting. And obviously you can't have hunting in this situation, but in places like Kensington and El Serita, you just, you can take an animal maybe under extraordinary circumstances, but the hazard is just too great. Speaker 3: Well, does, does trapping become a solution or is that Speaker 4: it's very, very expensive and hard to do and people think contraception, well again, if you have animals in captivity or that sort [00:09:30] of thing, contraception works great, but unfree and roaming animals is very expensive. It just won't work. So literally there is no, no good solution. And you know, again, to refer to the Monterey Peninsula where we have this longer record, people get excited, you know, and they, they finally get enough information to see that there's really not much that can be done. And by that time the deer start going down on their own and people forget [00:10:00] about the problem and 15 years later Speaker 3: back comes back again. Yeah. One of the other interesting parts of that original survey too was that all day the deer at concentrated toward the upland, the penetration to the El Sorito down near the bat, it's actually quite deep. Although in low numbers they actually get right down there and to very high density, high traffic areas. Basically they go down pillars Speaker 4: too much concrete, you know, and not enough deer habitat. Right. But if there's any [00:10:30] residential neighborhood with the typical local gardens and some on their there, they were on Albany Hill. Yeah, they went clear down to the bay. Were any place that there was suitable habitat that they were there? Yeah. Speaker 3: And Wayne would the current survey and then hopefully you're going to try to continue this project. Do you need to get funding for it or how will you maintain? Well, fortunately the sort of work doesn't require large amounts of funding. I shouldn't say that publicly [00:11:00] because of course we're always after funding, but, but unfortunately, this sort of work can be data rich without large amounts of funding because we were primarily interested in people's observations and their opinions. And in a topic like this, uh, people are actually very forthcoming and very helpful for some reason. Uh, most sorts of surveys have very low response rate. So I think people fear, feel harassed and harried by surveys, political surveys, commercial surveys. But [00:11:30] when it comes to wildlife, the seems to attract people's interest and, and, um, most everyone has an opinion on wildlife in their, in their locality. Speaker 3: And so fortunately, uh, we get very high response rates, which we're very grateful for for the sort of survey. So, um, the resources required to undertake a survey, a fairly rudimentary, which actually makes it possible to do this sort of work over the long term with some confidence. So I, I think depending on the outcomes of this one, [00:12:00] we'll almost certainly repeat it. I'd be very interested in knowing how our, uh, deer and other wildlife disperse through this landscape. What are the barriers and triggers to that widespread movement? I suspect that there are elements of the urban landscape that actually landscape architects and urban designers plan for other reasons. The deer and other wildlife I find very useful for moving about the landscape. [00:12:30] These corridors that I mentioned, for example, when people count sell land anymore under [inaudible]. So, uh, electric was our, um, these, these, my function is very important corridors for wildlife movement through the landscape, uh, in fact may be making the urban landscape much more permeable than it used to be. Speaker 5: [inaudible] [00:13:00] you're listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley. Today we're talking with Wayne Linklater and Dale Macola about wild animals, urban sentence. [inaudible] Speaker 4: so you're really focused on deer because they were the past, so to speak. Well, that's what we focused [00:13:30] on, but you know, rod also keeping a very pretty close watch on what was going on with pay odis because they were one of the predators. And again, I'm not familiar with what coyotes are doing right now, but they were coming down through that Mosher corridor clear down to the middle school down there. Uh, and, uh, you know, we had some evidence that mountain lines were, you know, on the verge of coming in one case where it probably [00:14:00] was a mountain lion, it came down below Arlington Avenue and of course a that recent mountain lion, you know, Jason White, Shaddock Shaddock Avenue, I think Shotokan Cedar. And uh, so it's a problem with the disparate young dispersing animals meanly. You know, these aren't mountain lions that have territories that overlap. It. Speaker 4: It usually when we see animals like that, they're, they're young [00:14:30] animals that are dispersing and trying to find a territory where they can, they can live. And I, and of course these, uh, sere make awfully good meals and of course we worry about an attack on a person. You know, that, right? That's the, the big concern because it, in each case, the probability is very, very low, but enough cases and then, you know, eventually will become inevitable that there [00:15:00] will be some attack and then all the wheels will come off because there would be zero tolerance for that. So then that would reintroduce hunting. Well you can't hunt here. So it would be hard to do any kind of control. That's what makes this so difficult is uh, the, the sort of example we have is down, uh, on the Monterey peninsula where the deer have periodically [00:15:30] gone up and gone down again for reasons that we don't really understand. Speaker 4: We know it's not direct mortality, it's failure and success of reproduction, not the attempt to reproduce, but that the fond doesn't survive for reasons that we don't understand, but they've gone up and down on like a 15 to 18 year time period. So my [00:16:00] expectation is that these deer may show some sort of similar pattern. Eventually we may figure out why. And like I say, just over the last year or so, there are the signs that the deer are starting to come up. So peaked in 1995 already started going down. They went down very, very gradually. Our radio collared animals, you know, live, normal lifespans and very gradually disappeared just like [00:16:30] you would, you would expect. What is that life span? How long? Well, the urban area, uh, the equivalent of 70 would probably be about 12 or 13 years for deer and, but you know, some humans live to be a hundred, so occasionally you're gonna probably get a 16 or 17 year old, uh, deer. And then again in the urban area where the hazards aren't that great. Interestingly, the animal that was the radio animal that [00:17:00] we had that lived along this time died in a yard right across the street from the yard where we captured it. Speaker 4: You could easily toss the rock, the spot where we captured it to where it went to its final resting. It goes back to that really small range that you were talking about in hotspots for food because of gardening and also fruit trees, [00:17:30] which isn't major attracted when, when there's fruit in the falls. Speaker 5: [inaudible] you're listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley. Today we're talking with [inaudible] and Dale McCullough about wild animals and urban sex. [inaudible] Speaker 4: [00:18:00] just, uh, you know, just the recent illustration of what we're talking about, who I know, the biology of the animals, they, uh, have had some problems with deer attacks, quote on people. Also down near the the food ghetto. I was contacted indirectly by one of the graduate students in, in the [00:18:30] department here who is working with, uh, a city official on that. And I said, well, I don't, I don't know what's going on, but my guess is that people are walking dogs and it's females with Fonz that are attacking because in the wild they recognize that dog is a coyote or so on. Well, it turns out that is exactly what the situation was when they talked about it a bit. But see, just having that little [00:19:00] clue about, you know, the biology of the animal and how those interactions work puts that whole problem into a different context. Speaker 3: Piece of information. Like that immediately informs because suddenly the options are a, the biological control of her mother, Dia. But also this becomes an information management problem, doesn't it? Because for most people, when they understand that the steer is acting in defense, they'll change the [00:19:30] behavior, but that information becomes a way of managing the problem by changing people's behavior rather than potentially the cost of managing a deer population. Right. Wildlife feeding is a classic example of this, isn't it? Where in places where the feeding of wildlife becomes a problem, the wildlife come in, they come in at last dean's states, they lose their fear of people. They immediately become more dangerous. Just that piece of information [00:20:00] and some sort of social marketing campaign to inform people that actually the magnitude of the problem, that feeling causes is sometimes often enough, enough to reduce the magnitude of the problem. People change their behavior. It also empowers people and it empowers management agencies in ways that other sorts of solutions, which grant all sorts of controls. He don't [inaudible]. Speaker 4: Yeah. The thing is it, it sensitizes people. So if you say you shouldn't be feeding them, you shouldn't be taming them. That's dangerous. [00:20:30] You should be a little afraid of the deer and the deer should be a little afraid of you. And then there are homeless nerve problems. But if the deer totally becomes on afraid, that's when the problem comes in. And most wildlife problems are of that kind. So like where there've been cases, coyotes if attack children, it's in cases where people have been feeding them, they've completely lost their fear. And the other thing, as you can tell people, you should reinforce if, if you approach the deer [00:21:00] and, and they don't go, go away, you know, get your darn broom or whatever you have, you know, but just make that deer get outta there to establish the fact that it is still not running the place. [inaudible] Speaker 3: if we take a step back and, and think about, uh, relationships between wildlife and people in urban landscapes, one of the really interesting parts of that context to me is that this year the world's urban population just tipped 50%. [00:21:30] The world's population just took 50% of than most people in the world now live in urban areas. They live in, in areas which should depauperate of wildlife and wilderness. It's really interesting to me to try and understand what the implications of that are for the future of wildlife conservation and wilderness conservation. Because increasingly the world is going to depend on people making decisions who [00:22:00] no longer have contact with wilderness or wildlife anymore. The way that our grandparents did for instance, and other academics have talked about this idea of extinction of experience. So the voting populous in North America for instance, are going to be less and less ecologically or environmentally literate with time. The more open eyes they become, it makes you wonder, doesn't it? Hair important. Therefore, relationships with wildlife in urban areas might [00:22:30] become for facilitating this relationship with wilderness. So that's one of the things that gets me interested in in urban landscapes and these urban things like DNA. So let me just say thank you very much for your time in talking about this with us. You're most welcome Speaker 5: [inaudible] [00:23:00] [inaudible], Speaker 2: [00:23:30] a regular feature of spectrum's dimension, few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. The science at cow lecture for May is associate Professor Neil Seuss. We from the Department of Environmental Science Policy and management at the College of natural resources. The lecture will be May 21st at 11:00 AM in the genetics and plant biology building room 100 he will be talking about extreme sociality, super colonies of the invasive [00:24:00] Argentine ant with the end of the semester days away. Here's an on campus resource you may find helpful. Reuse. Reuse is a student run program dedicated to promoting the reuse of materials on the UC Berkeley campus. They promote reuse by providing spaces for the campus community to freely exchange reusable goods. The reuse stations consist of shelving units placed in buildings where campus members donate and pick up reusable materials [00:24:30] to learn where the stations are located. Visit their website, reuse.berkeley.edu for those with bigger items or specific needs. Speaker 2: Reuse now sponsors an online forum for exchanging things. The forum address is exchange.berkeley.edu you do need to have a berkeley.edu email address to use the forum Thursday May 12th his bike to work day at UC Berkeley on bike to work day. [00:25:00] UC Berkeley will host an energizer station in Sproul Plaza from 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM I have no idea what an energizer station is. If you have a bike and you need help fixing it or maintaining it, there are at least two groups on campus ready to help citizens cycle and by cy cow. Both have free sessions to repair bikes and hopefully teach you how to maintain your bike. Citizens Cycle has two free clinics a week in front of the East Asian library. The Monday clinic is held [00:25:30] from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM and the Friday clinic is from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM citizens cycle is a voluntary student group. Buy Cycle has free repair three days a week. Speaker 2: Monday 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM Wednesday 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM Friday 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM their website is buy-side cow, B I c y c a l.com. The free repair [00:26:00] sessions are held just behind the Golden Bear cafe at Sproul Plaza by cycle is a student funded cooperative. Two news items of note. This first news story was derived from the UC Berkeley News Center story by Sarah Yang in early April, 2011 energy secretary Steven Chu announced grants totaling 112 point $5 million of funding over five years to support the development of advanced solar photovoltaic [00:26:30] related manufacturing processes throughout the United States. The Energy Department's sunshot advanced manufacturing partnerships will help the solar power industry overcome technical barriers and reduce for photo-voltaic installations. A local outgrowth of this sunshot funding is the bay area photovoltaics consortium jointly led by the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University. The consortium will receive [00:27:00] $25 million spread over five years. Industry sources will provide $1 million annually to the consortium budget. Speaker 2: The Bay area photovoltaics consortium will fund competitive grants through a process open to all universities, national laboratories and research institutions. The consortium seeks to spur research and development of new materials and manufacturing processes that will cut the cost significantly, increased production volume and improve the performance [00:27:30] of solar cells and devices. Ali's Javi, UC Berkeley, associate professor of electrical engineering and co-director of the consortium addressed their goals by saying the cost of solar energy in 2010 was about $3 and 40 cents per watt of power installed. Our end goal is to decrease that cost to $1 per watt installed. Our collaboration with industry will be critical in achieving this goal. We are fortunate that the bay area is home to such a high density of photo-voltaic related [00:28:00] companies. Cal Green Fund grants for 2011 were announced at the eighth annual UC Berkeley Sustainability Summit. April 19th the grants were awarded to Christopher carbuncle at the UC botanical garden. Josh Mendell College of letters and science. Elizabeth Chan of the energy and Resources Class one nine zero any Gordon and Paris Yacht Chakrabarti at the UC Berkeley compost alliance and frank you [00:28:30] at UC residents hall assembly Speaker 5: [inaudible] can use occurred during the show is from an Austin, a David album titled Volker and [00:29:00] [inaudible]. Thank you for listening to spectrum. We are happy to hear from our listeners. If you have comments about the show or we'd like to link to Wayne Linklater's website, which you can download the El Cerrito Kensington wild animal survey, send us an email or an email address is spectrum dot k a l s@yahoo.com [00:29:30] join us in two weeks at the same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
I remember clearly the day I was offered my first credit card. It was in Berkeley, CA in 1985. I was walking on Sproul Plaza and I saw a booth manned by two students. They were giving out all kinds of swag, so I walked over to see what was to be had. T-shirts, I think. I asked them if I could get a credit card, sure that the answer had to be “no.” But the answer was an enthusiastic “yes.” I asked them if they understood that: a) I had no income beyond a tiny graduate student stipend; b) that I was carrying a debt from college that had been kindly “deferred”; and c) that my long-term prospects, money-making wise, were poor (the market in early Russian history degrees not being very hot). They said they didn't know any of that, but it didn't matter. All I had to do was to fill out a form and the card would arrive in the mail. I declined. As Louis Hyman tells us in his excellent and important Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink (Princeton UP, 2011), it wasn't always so. Before the 1920s, most people could get no credit at all, least of all from a financial institution. But then, thanks to a confluence of odd interests, consumer credit expanded mightily. Companies that made expensive stuff (cars) and companies that handled large pools of idle money (banks) found, much to their surprise that if you lent ordinary folks large sums of money at moderate interest, they would pay it back. The producers and banks lent more; consumers borrowed and bought more; and, in turn, the producers and banks used higher profits to increase productivity, putting still more money in the pockets of consumers. And so the cycle continued, ultimately fostering the largest expansion in production and consumption the world had ever seen. Whether it will continue is a subject of some dispute today. A review of Debtor Nation can be found in Public Books here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I remember clearly the day I was offered my first credit card. It was in Berkeley, CA in 1985. I was walking on Sproul Plaza and I saw a booth manned by two students. They were giving out all kinds of swag, so I walked over to see what was...
I remember clearly the day I was offered my first credit card. It was in Berkeley, CA in 1985. I was walking on Sproul Plaza and I saw a booth manned by two students. They were giving out all kinds of swag, so I walked over to see what was to be had. T-shirts, I think. I asked them if I could get a credit card, sure that the answer had to be “no.” But the answer was an enthusiastic “yes.” I asked them if they understood that: a) I had no income beyond a tiny graduate student stipend; b) that I was carrying a debt from college that had been kindly “deferred”; and c) that my long-term prospects, money-making wise, were poor (the market in early Russian history degrees not being very hot). They said they didn’t know any of that, but it didn’t matter. All I had to do was to fill out a form and the card would arrive in the mail. I declined. As Louis Hyman tells us in his excellent and important Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink (Princeton UP, 2011), it wasn’t always so. Before the 1920s, most people could get no credit at all, least of all from a financial institution. But then, thanks to a confluence of odd interests, consumer credit expanded mightily. Companies that made expensive stuff (cars) and companies that handled large pools of idle money (banks) found, much to their surprise that if you lent ordinary folks large sums of money at moderate interest, they would pay it back. The producers and banks lent more; consumers borrowed and bought more; and, in turn, the producers and banks used higher profits to increase productivity, putting still more money in the pockets of consumers. And so the cycle continued, ultimately fostering the largest expansion in production and consumption the world had ever seen. Whether it will continue is a subject of some dispute today. A review of Debtor Nation can be found in Public Books here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I remember clearly the day I was offered my first credit card. It was in Berkeley, CA in 1985. I was walking on Sproul Plaza and I saw a booth manned by two students. They were giving out all kinds of swag, so I walked over to see what was to be had. T-shirts, I think. I asked them if I could get a credit card, sure that the answer had to be “no.” But the answer was an enthusiastic “yes.” I asked them if they understood that: a) I had no income beyond a tiny graduate student stipend; b) that I was carrying a debt from college that had been kindly “deferred”; and c) that my long-term prospects, money-making wise, were poor (the market in early Russian history degrees not being very hot). They said they didn’t know any of that, but it didn’t matter. All I had to do was to fill out a form and the card would arrive in the mail. I declined. As Louis Hyman tells us in his excellent and important Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink (Princeton UP, 2011), it wasn’t always so. Before the 1920s, most people could get no credit at all, least of all from a financial institution. But then, thanks to a confluence of odd interests, consumer credit expanded mightily. Companies that made expensive stuff (cars) and companies that handled large pools of idle money (banks) found, much to their surprise that if you lent ordinary folks large sums of money at moderate interest, they would pay it back. The producers and banks lent more; consumers borrowed and bought more; and, in turn, the producers and banks used higher profits to increase productivity, putting still more money in the pockets of consumers. And so the cycle continued, ultimately fostering the largest expansion in production and consumption the world had ever seen. Whether it will continue is a subject of some dispute today. A review of Debtor Nation can be found in Public Books here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I remember clearly the day I was offered my first credit card. It was in Berkeley, CA in 1985. I was walking on Sproul Plaza and I saw a booth manned by two students. They were giving out all kinds of swag, so I walked over to see what was to be had. T-shirts, I think. I asked them if I could get a credit card, sure that the answer had to be “no.” But the answer was an enthusiastic “yes.” I asked them if they understood that: a) I had no income beyond a tiny graduate student stipend; b) that I was carrying a debt from college that had been kindly “deferred”; and c) that my long-term prospects, money-making wise, were poor (the market in early Russian history degrees not being very hot). They said they didn’t know any of that, but it didn’t matter. All I had to do was to fill out a form and the card would arrive in the mail. I declined. As Louis Hyman tells us in his excellent and important Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink (Princeton UP, 2011), it wasn’t always so. Before the 1920s, most people could get no credit at all, least of all from a financial institution. But then, thanks to a confluence of odd interests, consumer credit expanded mightily. Companies that made expensive stuff (cars) and companies that handled large pools of idle money (banks) found, much to their surprise that if you lent ordinary folks large sums of money at moderate interest, they would pay it back. The producers and banks lent more; consumers borrowed and bought more; and, in turn, the producers and banks used higher profits to increase productivity, putting still more money in the pockets of consumers. And so the cycle continued, ultimately fostering the largest expansion in production and consumption the world had ever seen. Whether it will continue is a subject of some dispute today. A review of Debtor Nation can be found in Public Books here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I remember clearly the day I was offered my first credit card. It was in Berkeley, CA in 1985. I was walking on Sproul Plaza and I saw a booth manned by two students. They were giving out all kinds of swag, so I walked over to see what was to be had. T-shirts, I think. I asked them if I could get a credit card, sure that the answer had to be “no.” But the answer was an enthusiastic “yes.” I asked them if they understood that: a) I had no income beyond a tiny graduate student stipend; b) that I was carrying a debt from college that had been kindly “deferred”; and c) that my long-term prospects, money-making wise, were poor (the market in early Russian history degrees not being very hot). They said they didn’t know any of that, but it didn’t matter. All I had to do was to fill out a form and the card would arrive in the mail. I declined. As Louis Hyman tells us in his excellent and important Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink (Princeton UP, 2011), it wasn’t always so. Before the 1920s, most people could get no credit at all, least of all from a financial institution. But then, thanks to a confluence of odd interests, consumer credit expanded mightily. Companies that made expensive stuff (cars) and companies that handled large pools of idle money (banks) found, much to their surprise that if you lent ordinary folks large sums of money at moderate interest, they would pay it back. The producers and banks lent more; consumers borrowed and bought more; and, in turn, the producers and banks used higher profits to increase productivity, putting still more money in the pockets of consumers. And so the cycle continued, ultimately fostering the largest expansion in production and consumption the world had ever seen. Whether it will continue is a subject of some dispute today. A review of Debtor Nation can be found in Public Books here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices