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| I have no idea if anyone still reads this. But I've moved on to here:
http://fantastischen.blogspot.com
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Governor Announces Support For Environmentally Harmful Road
San
Clemente, CA (January 16, 2008) – Yesterday, Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger issued a letter in support of the proposed 241 toll road
extension in South Orange County. The letter was issued just two weeks
before a critical vote by the California Coastal Commission to
determine if the proposed extension violates the California Coastal
Act. A staff report prepared by the CCC concludes that it does.
“We
are absolutely taken aback by this,” said Surfrider Foundation CEO Jim
Moriarty. “For the Governor to take this unprecedented step of
interfering with the workings of an independent and non-political
commission, an entity which was established by California voters and
whose sole responsibility is to decide the future of California’s
coasts and beaches based on law and fact, is entirely inappropriate.”
The
disappointing announcement comes just six days after the California
Governor unveiled his plans to close forty-eight California State
Parks, allow for the early release of prisoners from state correctional
facilities, and raise Department of Motor Vehicle fees.
“We
had hoped that Governor Schwarzenegger was insincere in his threat to
close state parks and beaches,” says Moriarty. “It now appears that he
is absolutely intent on sacrificing our state park system and natural
resources for his political objectives.”
The California
State Parks Department has maintained that they may be forced to
abandon nearly sixty percent of San Onofre State Beach Park, including
the popular San Mateo Creek Campground, should the proposed extension
to the 241 toll road be completed,
Governor
Schwarzenegger’s failure to support San Onofre State Beach Park by
endorsing the 241 toll road extension is in direct contrast to the
efforts of his Republican predecessors, President Richard M. Nixon and
then-Governor Ronald Reagan, both of whom worked to establish San
Onofre State Beach as a part of their legacy; hoping that it would
exist as a resource to be used and enjoyed by future generations.
The
Surfrider Foundation activists and other opponents to the planned toll
road will be gathering in Oceanside, California on February 6th for a
planned rally outside the California Coastal Commission hearing. All
members of the public are invited to attend. Please go to www.savetrestles.org for more information.
About the Surfrider Foundation
The
Surfrider Foundation is a non-profit grassroots organization dedicated
to the protection and enjoyment of our world’s oceans, waves and
beaches. Founded in 1984 by a handful of visionary surfers in Malibu,
California, the Surfrider Foundation now maintains over 50,000 members
and 80 chapters worldwide. For more information on the Surfrider
Foundation, go to www.surfrider.org.
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| Someone told me today that I sounded really happy with life.
I think that was the best compliment anyone's ever given me.
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| Everyone wants to know what I am going to do once I graduate. The truth is, I have no idea, but I have every idea. My realistically unrealistic dream is very simple and very difficult at the same time: I want to move to a tropical, coastal location and surf, swim, and fish all day.
It sounds really implausible, doesn't it? I mean, it is everyone's fantasy. But here is why I think it is plausible for me: I don't care about money. I don't care about a job. I don't care about a plan, or even more, a specific goal. I want to be happy, and I know what will make me happy.
I had an epiphany today, and it was a very obvious epiphany--a thought that I think crosses everyone's minds, but rarely stays firmly established. I only have one physical, Earth-given life. I don't believe in reincarnation, and I believe in an afterlife, which is a whole different entry in and of itself, but the basic idea is.. this one life I have is pretty short. I mean, I'm almost 23, and assuming I live until roughly 75, all things allowing, I've already lived about 1/3 of my life.
People have different goals. Some people want to get a well-paying job that provides them financial stability, a 401k, and a future college fund for their children. I think a part of me wants this, but only a very small part of me. Some others want to help people. I want to do this too, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I am selfish, and also have a different idea of helping. I used to want to do something directly beneficial for people, such as work in a shelter, food bank, etc. But my goal is more to live my life in a way that benefits the Earth more than takes away from it, and to live a life that is ecologically conscious rather than indifferent. With my priorities for myself and my children, I think that is the best way I could contribute to the welfare of mankind.
Anyway, going back to what I was saying. My ultimate goal is to one day move away from all of this. I don't care if I have no income. A lot of people say that, but here's the thing. You only want/need more money if you have it. I want none of it, so that I never miss it and I never need it.
I want to live shabbily. I want to have a small hut, something that hopefully me and my mate can build together. Maybe it will get blown down by the first hurricane, typhoon, whatever. But we will rebuild it. I want to fish and hunt for my meals. I want to collect my own fruits and vegetables from wherever I can find it. My feet and my hands will be scraped up, bleeding from trying to pick whatever I can. But over time, they'll get used to it. I won't have soft, supple, gentle hands. I don't really want that.
I don't want to spend the rest of my life living a 9-5. I don't want to work for a paycheck, clock-in-clock-out, call in sick, anything. I don't want to look forward to the weekend, or the happy hour gathering with my coworkers. I want to have a cheap, rusty little boat that I take out to go fish with, nothing to catch with except for a ratty net that I have to resew all the time. I want to puke my brains out from the motion sickness, and eventually become accustomed to the rocking of the sea.
I would fashion my own hammock out of old clothes. I will lay in the sun and become ridiculously overdosed on vitamin D, and be deliriously happy without a care in the world besides what I might eat for dinner, where I might want to go one day, who I want to talk to. I want to have to take a boat, or walk 50 miles, or buy from/trade with the locals just get what we consider basic supplies. I want to learn how to make my own fire, fashion my own spearfishing pole, wash my one pair of jeans in the ocean to get it somewhat clean, chew mint to keep my teeth clean.. God it sounds so filthy!
As I'm typing this, part of me is thinking that it will NEVER happen. I will continue to live my life the way it is, very comfortable in these four insulated walls, a mattress with a furry comforter, and a whole wardrobe to choose from in the morning. But I think part of me knows that maybe it will happen, maybe not for the rest of my life, but at least for a good part of it. Because I will never be happy unless I at least try it, and there's too much determination within me to just let it pass by as a dream I can't make a reality.
It won't happen right away. I am not so unrealistically, head-in-the-clouds dreamer-like that I don't have requirements I have to meet before I go away. My credit card and college debts will be paid off. I will have been working some kind of job for a few years, saving away most of what I make to fund my travel fare and to not worry in case of a major emergency (like my leg being bitten off by a great white, ha knock on wood). I don't mind slumming it, bearing a few more years in my parents' house to save enough to be financially tied to no one besides myself. I hope to be married, or close, so that I might have a person next to me to make it all the more worthwhile, someone who hopefully shares even a glimmer of this impossibly possible dream.
I know it sounds so naive, and so fantastical, and even contradictory in some parts. But I'm 99% sure I will one day get to achieve everything I've just stated, not just because it's what I want, but because it's all so essential for me to accomplish so that I can look back and say I've lived my life on my terms, less afraid of societal restrictions than the unknown, and with simplicity.
This is my dream. What's yours, and what will you do to accomplish it?
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| Rimmon C. Fay, 78; scientist fought Santa Monica Bay pollution
Los Angeles Times
WHISTLE-BLOWER:
Rimmon C. Fay focused public attention on industrial discharges of the
pesticide DDT off the Palos Verdes peninsula that made fish too toxic
to eat and nearly drove the California brown pelican to extinction.
By Kenneth R. Weiss, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 4, 2008
Rimmon
C. Fay, a marine scientist and longtime Venice Beach lifeguard who
devoted his life to saving the Santa Monica Bay from pollution and
other assaults, has died. He was 78.
Fay died of a heart attack
at Berkley West Convalescent Hospital in Santa Monica on Tuesday after
a series of strokes that had left him incapacitated in recent years.
He has probably spent more time under water than any man on the planet.
— Harold Dunnigan, a former Navy diver and retired Los Angeles County lifeguard
A
UCLA-trained biochemist and professional diver who collected specimens
for biomedical research, Fay focused public attention on industrial
discharges of the pesticide DDT off the Palos Verdes peninsula that
made fish too toxic to eat and nearly drove the California brown
pelican to extinction. He was among the first to call for Los Angeles
to halt dumping of sewage sludge, a once-quixotic quest that drew
kindred souls in the 1980s who joined with him to launch the movement
to clean up coastal waters.
He spent six years as a state
coastal commissioner, until complaints to Sacramento leaders about his
uncompromising anti-growth attitude and open outrage about damaging
coastal wetlands and beachfront got him fired. He was replaced on the
panel by a developer.
Admirers often likened Fay to John
Steinbeck's friend and drinking companion, Edward F. Ricketts, a
pioneer of marine ecology who inspired the character "Doc" in the novel
"Cannery Row."
"He was so much like Doc Ricketts," said Dorothy
Green, who joined with Fay and others to launch the nonprofit group
Heal the Bay. "He earned his living collecting animals for research. He
drank too much. He would go out diving at night -- alone."
Fay
supplied sea creatures, aquarium tanks and advice during the production
of the 1982 movie of "Cannery Row," starring Nick Nolte and Debra
Winger. His son, Douglas, has a vivid recollection of his beaming
father on the movie set: "He was puffing on his cigars. That was one of
the best times."
Fay also spent much of his life, after his
divorce in 1975, living and sleeping in his laboratory, located first
in Venice, then in Inglewood and Port Hueneme.
Far more
comfortable in a wetsuit than a dress shirt and jacket, Fay logged
thousands of hours prowling the seafloor doing his own research and
collecting specimens.
"He has probably spent more time
underwater than any man on the planet," said Harold Dunnigan, a former
Navy diver and retired Los Angeles County lifeguard who taught Fay how
to dive in 1955. Dunnigan said he could easily out-compete Fay in
swimming contests, but underwater, few could keep up with him. "He was
at one with the ocean."
Over a span of 40 years, Fay made four
to six dives a day, mostly collecting live sea animals for his
business, Pacific Bio-Marine Labs. He would whisk the animals to meet
planes departing nearby Los Angeles International Airport to biomedical
researchers at universities worldwide.
His live specimens were
used to study human nerve cell damage as well as to develop weapons
against tumors and to concoct a non-addictive pain reliever.
Fay
supplied sea hares, Aplysia californica, to Columbia University
neuroscientist Eric Kandel, who shared the 2000 Nobel Prize for
research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons, said
Janet Fay, his ex-wife, who lives in Salinas, Calif.
Fay
celebrated the contributions his marine creatures made to mankind, but
often lamented the disservice that man had done in return to sea life
and undersea habitat.
"They've dumped everything in this bay except radioactive waste," he once complained to a Times reporter.
Although
he saw some improvement in recent years, Fay was disappointed at the
long-term trends that had transformed Southern California waters from a
major fishing area into an industrial dump.
He talked about the burden of knowing how the bay looked more than 40 years ago, and how it appears today.
"You
spent your whole life around the ocean, you develop a sense of
responsibility to the environment. If you don't respond to your
convictions, then what kind of person are you?"
Born July 22,
1929, in Santa Monica and raised in Venice, Fay remembered his father,
a recreational fisherman, reeling up barn-door-sized halibut from the
bay at a time when boys wading into the surf at Venice Beach could
still see both their feet and darting fish.
Fay put himself
through graduate school at UCLA in the mid-1950s by working as a
lifeguard, a part-time occupation that he continued until 2001. He also
paid for schooling by collecting sea urchins and other critters for
researchers at UCLA, where he earned a doctorate in biochemistry in
1961, and later for colleagues at USC, where he did postdoctoral
studies in chemical oceanography.
Dunnigan helped Fay launch
Pacific Bio-Marine, but remembers his friend as driven and demanding,
willing to work impossibly long hours. Once the engine of their skiff
broke down as they left Catalina's Avalon Harbor. Fay insisted that
they row back to the mainland.
"We rowed from 4 p.m. and got in
at San Pedro at 2 a.m. and then we had to unload the boat," Dunnigan
said. Fay burned out assistants quickly, and often worked alone.
Fay
and other marine scientists over the years noticed a retreat of
Southern California's kelp forests and depletion of various types of
fish and shellfish. They debated the reasons for the declines, ranging
from poisoning, smothering by sediment, loss of coastal habitat to
development, or excessive fishing and harvesting.
When
government scientists found extraordinarily high levels of DDT in fish
near Palos Verdes, they leaked the documents to Fay, who brought them
to The Times and other media outlets, said Craig Barilotti, a marine
ecologist who worked with Fay over the years.
The public splash
was the first step in a campaign that eventually ended the dumping of
DDT by Montrose Chemical Corp. in Torrance into the county sewer lines
that discharged into the ocean near Palos Verdes.
Fay helped
draft the California Coastal Plan, which was the basis for the law that
governs the California Coastal Commission. "He was a rigorous,
cantankerous guy who brought great scientific knowledge and integrity
to the table, and I loved him for it," said Peter Douglas, the
commission's executive director.
Over the years, Fay pointed an
accusatory finger at Los Angeles for poor sewage treatment and at
Southern California Edison's nuclear power plants at San Onofre and
other industrial dischargers that were, as he saw it, choking sea life
with pollutants.
"He was always breaking new ground, pointing out new problems," Barilotti said.
Fay
often showed up to testify before public hearings carrying fish covered
in tumors or toting other evidence from his underwater surveys.
"He
was a whistle-blower," Barilotti said. "You make a lot of political
enemies that way, and a lot of developers and others tried to discredit
him. To myself and a lot of other people, Rim was an inspiration."
Los
Angeles County lifeguards are planning a public memorial at the Venice
Beach breakwater. No date or time has been set. His four sons are
planning to sprinkle the ashes of his cremated remains into the waters
of the bay he loved.
Besides his ex-wife Janet and son Douglas,
of Marina del Rey, he is survived by three other sons, Rimmon B. Fay of
Inglewood, Wesley Fay of Everett, Wash., and Trevor Fay of Monterey,
Calif., as well as eight grandchildren.
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