Earth Dave 1990
1990 was the 20th anniversary of Earth Day. I was a graduate student at Virginia Tech. I don’t recall how it happened, but I became the campus Earth Day coordinator. I received so many calls (remember land lines) from people wanting to speak to Dave about Earth Day, that my roommate Alison, who answered many of those calls, starting referring to me as Earth Dave. “Another call for you, Earth Dave,” she would exclaim, almost cheerfully.
Up Close in the Distance
Adhering to the social distancing mandate, Garnett and I decided to head up to the Blue Ridge this past weekend. The weather was cold and foggy. We headed to a spot called Humpback Rocks, which would normally be crawling with people on a fair weekend day, as its rocky escarpment offers spectacular views of the Piedmont to one side and Great Valley to the other. But on this cold morning, the top of the ridge was shrouded in fog and mist, and the crowds had stayed away.
An Environmental Restoration Workforce for the Future
by Lori Lilly, Howard EcoWorks
I lead an organization called Howard EcoWorks (EcoWorks) in Howard County, MD. We empower communities and diverse workforces to respect and restore our natural systems for future generations. For the first several years, we focused on one thing – building rain gardens. As our relationship with the County, our primary funder, grew, we started performing maintenance on the County’s stormwater and stream restoration practices. Our organization and its programs have been growing quickly and succeeding in many ways. However, I have also witnessed our County seat, Ellicott City, devastated by a series of freak, high intensity storm events. With each successive storm, my professional assumptions about how to restore a watershed, and my organization’s role in that, have changed.