Tuesday! A day for a little hopeful news!
As you can see by Itzl's concerned look, this group gives Kossacks a safe place to check in, a daily diary where we can let people know we are alive, doing OK, and not affected by such things as heat, blizzards, floods, wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages, earthquakes, or other such things that could keep us off DKos. It also allows us to find other Kossacks nearby for in-person checks when other methods of communication fail - a buddy system. If you're not here, or anywhere else on DKos, and there are adverse conditions in your area (floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, earthquakes etc.), we and your buddy are going to check up on you. If you are going to be away from your computer for a day or a week, let us know here. We care!
IAN is a great group to join, and a good place to learn to write diaries. Drop one of us a Kosmail and ask to be added to the Itzl Alert Network anytime! We all share the publishing duties, and we welcome everyone who reads IAN to write diaries for the group! Every member is an editor, so anyone can take a turn when they have something to say, photos and music to share, a cause to promote or news!
We do have a diary schedule. But, when you are ready to write that diary, either post in thread or send FloridaSNMOM a Kosmail with the date. If you need someone to fill in, ditto. FloridaSNMOM is here on and off through the day usually from around 9:30 or 10 am eastern to around 11 pm eastern.
Monday: Crimson Quillfeather alternating with ZenTrainer
Tuesday: ejoanna
Wednesday: Pam from Calif
Thursday: art ah zen
Friday: FloridaSNMOM
Saturday: Gwennedd
Sunday: loggersbrat
So much awful and depressing news this last week. Maybe time for a little uplift? How about this NYTimes story from my alma mater, UC Berkeley?
Admission to the University of California, Berkeley, is the dream of high school students across the state and the globe. It’s also not a bad place to be a baby peregrine falcon.
Last week, two baby falcons jumped from the balcony of the university’s bell tower and took their first flight as their parents warily soared above them.
At this famously liberal campus, there were no safety nets for the chicks, who were hatched sometime in late May. But there was plenty of support from volunteers on the ground. The campus police were given instructions on what to do if they found a baby falcon on the pavement below.
Signs were posted, and university departments were put on alert. A crew of falcon lovers led by a retired medical researcher, Mary Malec, trained a monocular on the tower and constantly scanned the skies for the babies, ready to rescue them with cardboard pet carriers and rush them to a vet if their flight failed. They called the effort “Fledge Watch.”
Peregrine falcons are the world’s fastest animals, capable of diving more than 200 miles an hour to capture their prey (other birds) in midflight. The birds were on the brink of extinction five decades ago, their eggs made too fragile by the pesticide DDT, which was delisted as an acceptable pesticide by the federal government in 1972.
Since then, the peregrine’s remarkable comeback has been a model case for environmentalists. The birds perch on top of cliffs and increasingly on skyscrapers and other urban structures; they were taken off the endangered species list in 1999.
Peregrine falcons have had layovers on the Berkeley campus over the years but this is the first time they have been spotted nesting there. Administrators hope the parents will re-enroll next year and have more chicks.
The university held a contest on social media to name the two female chicks and came up with Fiat and Lux, taken from Berkeley’s Latin motto, “Let there be light.”
Gretchen Kell, a spokeswoman for the university who says she is repeatedly drawn to the tower for news of the chicks, said she couldn’t help but compare the first flights to a child leaving home.
The “Bell Tower” in the story is the most famous landmark on the UCB campus.
It can be seen even from across the Bay in San Francisco.
When I was a student at Cal, aka, the Campanile, officially Sather Tower, was pretty much everyone’s clock: the beautiful bells rang out the hour—and sometimes gave us a little concert as well.
I could tell it was a rainy day before I even opened my shades up on the Northside: if the bell tones were “wavery”, I knew to take an umbrella along with me to class!