Ayers Portfolio

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Neil AyersEnvironmental Studies, FGCU [email protected]


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Table of Contents

Resume 3Personal Definition of Sustainability 4

Letter to the Editor 7

Definitions 8

Thoughts on becoming an Environmental Major 10

Service Learning 11

Theatrical Review, A writing Sample 18

The magnificent Frigate Bird 22

Regional Water Resources Management Research at FGCU 24

Statement of Future Goals 26

A letter on my behalf 27


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Neilson Ayers

1422 Loma Linda Drive Fort Myers, Florida 33919

239.274.3301 [email protected]

EDUCATION

Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, FL Expected Graduation May 2013

Pursuing a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Environmental Studies

4.0 Cumulative GPA Relevant coursework: Introduction to Environmental Policy, Environmental Biology, and

Conservation Strategies for a Sustainable Future

For Senior Project in Environmental Studies class, conducted a study entitled Regional WaterResources Management Research at Florida Gulf Coast University

Edison College, Fort Myers, FL 2007

Associate of Arts Degree with Honors, 4.0 Cumulative GPA

ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICE EXPERIENCE

Lee County Environmental Laboratory, Field Technician, Fort Myers, FL May 2011 Present

Collect field samples for lab analysis, including groundwater, surface water (marine, estuarine,fresh), drinking water, wastewater, wastewater sludge and rainwater.

Operate, maintain and calibrate YSI datasondes, Hach turbidity meters and CL2 kits, LiCor PARapparatus and other instrumentation used in field data collection.

Estero Bay Aquatic & Buffer Preserves, Environ. Specialist, Ft. Myers Beach, FL Oct. 2001 - June 2009

Performed seagrass monitoring in Estero Bay and Charlotte Harbor Aquatic Preserves Assisted with FGCUs oyster bar restoration projects Member of the Marine Mammal Stranding Network, including manatee capture for FWRI Acted as liaison for and with the Lee County Marine Law Enforcement Task Force Exotic plant and animal control, including supervising exotic tree removal crews; supervising

humane trapping and transporting of feral hogs

Participated in fire management and prescription burns Responsible for computer and network operations Hurricane Coordinator, supervised three hurricane evacuations of staff, documents, office

equipment and field equipment

Assisted with wading trips, kayak paddles and other public outreach programsBIA, Big Cypress Indian Reservation, Wildfire Fighter/Tech., Big Cypress, FL Feb. 1996 - July 1996

Performed wildfire firefighting and prescription burning. Operated heavy equipment, off-roadvehicles, fire equipment, etc. Drove and operated Class 6 fire engines in initial fire attacks.

LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE

U.S. Army,Artillery Officer, United States and Vietnam May 1967 Sept. 1969

Performed combat and command duties as Forward Observer, Fire Direction Officer, BatteryExecutive Officer in US and in the Central Highlands of the Republic of South Vietnam.

OTHER RELATED EXPERIENCE

Big Cypress National Preserve, Maintenance Worker, Ochopee, Florida July 1996 October 1996

General maintenance responsibilities, including construction, concrete pouring and sitepreparation, drywall, painting, air conditioning, electrical, etc.


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Personal Compost or Fertilizer Initiative!

Hypothesis:

One of my personal sustainability interests involves the yard around my house. In

some ways I am pleased with it, since I have planted a number of trees, mostly natives

but some interesting fruit trees as well (like jackfruit). But one thing that has always

annoyed me about my property and lot is that it is composed of sandy, shelly fill, like a

lot of houses in South Florida. Growing common garden plants like tomatoes, which was

easy in other places I have lived, requires heroic effort and liberal use of chemical

amendments.

Composting of some type is the obvious answer, but I have always been

disinclined to do it. I didnt want to deal with piles of compost, I didnt want to manage

my household waste anymore than is necessary.

But, recently, I started an experiment in composting which I could describe (but

not in this 100 words) and now Ive got a tomato plant thats pushing five feet high and

lots of tomatoes hanging from it.

I need to take this small experience (2x4 feet) and scale it to my yard. I want to

generate topsoil, and I want to do it with a minimum labor, muss and fuss, nor appear too

crazy to the neighbors.

I am telling myself I can do this.

Results and Conclusions:

After a couple of months, the results are in, and I discovered a basic flaw in my

hypothesis. That would be that as a personal initiative, it works but it does not scale. In

other words, I can enrich and even create soil on a small scale from my household waste

stream, but Im not going to create a second green revolution. I just dont generate a big

enough amount of garbage, trash, waste or whatever you want to call it.


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On the other hand, I am moving the health of my yard in the correct direction, for

as I slowly amend it, it slowly becomes more productive. It is also justifiable to state that

by whatever incremental amount I enrich my yard; I also incrementally reduce my formal

municipal waste stream, generating a small but real efficiency.

The scaling effect, to be achieved, will therefore not be accomplished by me

doing more of the same, but rather in having more people doing the same as me. That is

another challenge. Ours is a culture comprised of subdivisions full of houses that seek to

imitate English lawns and gardens of gentlemen, not sharecropper plots. Much of our

society has a vestigial but persuasive memory of our earlier generations experiences as

farmers, farm hands, sharecroppers and tenet farmers. They lived desperate lives indeed.

Paul A. Samuelson pointed out in 1948 that a farm worker was one of the lowest paid of

all workers. It is estimated that two-fifths of the 2 and one half million farm laborers

received less than $250 per year including keep! [and that it] represents

heartbreakingly low wages, considering the length of the working day and it exertions

involved (Samuelson 77).

A field trip to Immokalee reveals that Florida Ag still represents a substandard

way of life compared to that of most of us. Its no wonder few people aspire to amend

soils one way or the other. We need a fresh paradigm, one of a subdivision of prosperous

homeowners surrounded fabulous vegetable gardens and free range chickens. But now

Im outside the scope of my personal initiative, but the thought is one I can port over to

my letter to the editor


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Works Cited

Samuelson, Paul A.Economics: An Introductory Analysis. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1948. New

York: McGraw-Hill, 1997. Print.


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Neil Ayers

1422 Loma Linda Drive

Ft. Myers, Florida, 33919

The EditorThe Tallahassee Democrat

277 N. Magnolia Drive

Tallahassee, Florida 32301

To The Editor:

There are two national issues that I have been thinking about with increasing frequency, one is

the possibility of a potentially crippling rise in energy costs; second is a trending away from our nation

being an industrial and manufacturing based economy toward some other type of economy whichremains unexplored or understood. What would I do if gas really did go to $15 a gallon? What would I

do if unemployment didnt creep down but crept up, not so much for myself but for my community?

What if we dialed back the calendar 100 years, to a time when most Americans made (had to make)

their livelihood on farms? Where would I be? Where would you be? Not going to happen, many say,

but thats hoping for the best and thats not a plan.

So I decided to do a land use survey of my own property. Its my little piece of the American

Dream and Im pretty content. In terms of appearance, its pretty good. The grass and the trees and the

shrubs are all in the right places and it all fits in with the esthetics of my community. But in terms of

sustainability and productivity it is a desert. When I drove around a little, I realized that I was hardly

alone, because from the most modest subsidized housing areas to the gated communities, all I saw was

a barren land, no matter what the landscaping.

It was always so. Not so long ago 20 million home gardens supplied America with 40% of its

produce. During World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt rammed the concept by an obstinate U.S.D.A, and

Victory Gardens, also known as Food Gardens for Defense, became a part of daily life in the home front.

Make no mistake, these Victory Gardens could be a lot of work, and when the war ended Victory

Gardens went away (and by the way, the country experienced food shortages that year!)

Im not saying our precious Bahia and Floratam grass should be banned, Im suggesting that it

wouldnt hurt to look around and understand the potential of your own real estate and to explorealternatives. And I urge you to keep an open mind when fellow citizens and community leaders offer

alternatives to our individual land uses, and to more comprehensive community schemes to ensure our

childrens prosperity.

Truly yours,

Neil Ayers


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Sustainablity Definitions

When we talk about our hopes to make out world a better place for the humancommunity, we also are talking about making the world better for everybody elseout there. But we need to know meaning of words that are almost the same butvery different:

Conservation:Conservation is an economic strategy which encourages the wise use ofcurrently available natural resources, with somewhat less concern about what thefuture will bring. Conservation is associated with Gifford Pinchot, who stated thatConservation is first of all a recognition of the right of the present generation tothe fullest necessary use of the resources with which this country is blessed,which is a shorter-term world-view than that of Sustainability

Preservation:Preservation is the concept that certain parts of the planet are of such estheticexcellence that they should not be marred by the scars of human development,but rather be preserved in their natural state indefinitely, serving as naturalshrines to the wonder of nature. John Muir is often associated with the modernPreservationist movement.

Environmentalism:Environmentalism shares many of the same concerns as the above philosophies,except that it takes a non-anthropocentric (or biocentric) view of these issues.Human esthetics and economic concerns are secondary to the health andprosperity of the overall ecosystem. To paraphrase Aldo Leopold, whose ideasdovetail nicely with modern Environmentalism, this philosophy is about thinkinglike a mountain, not thinking like a man (or woman).

Sustainability:Sustainability is a strategy to cope with the increasing stresses that humans areplacing upon planets ecosystem. These stresses have increased dramatically inrecent (~ 100) years. Trend lines show dramatic increases in demand forenergy, food, fresh water and other natural resources. These trends suggest thatthe planet at some time in the future will be unable to fulfill these needs, to the

detriment of the human species. Sustainability is the name we give for to thecollective tasks of lessening our burden upon the planet so we may continue toexist and prosper perpetually.


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Check Out Sustainability:

Brown, Lester Russell.Eco-economy: Building an Economy for the Earth. New York:

W.W. Norton, 2001. Print.

Daily, Gretchen C., and Katherine Ellison. The New Economy of Nature: The Quest to

Make Conservation Profitable. Washington, DC: Island, 2002. Print.

Ehrlich, Paul R., and Anne H. Ehrlich. One with Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the

Human Future. Washington: Island, 2004. Print.

Lorey, David E. Global Environmental Challenges of the Twenty-first Century:

Resources, Consumption, and Sustainable Solutions. Wilmington, DE: SR, 2003.

Print.

Pimm, Stuart L. The World According to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth. New York:

McGraw-Hill, 2001. Print.

Smil, Vaclav.Energy at the Crossroads: Global Perspectives and Uncertainties.

Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2003. Print.

Speth, James Gustave.Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global

Environment. New Haven: Yale UP, 2004. Print.

The State of the Nation's Ecosystems: Measuring the Lands, Waters, and Living

Resources of the United States. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2002. Print.

Wiebe, Keith Daniel.Land Quality, Agricultural Productivity, and Food Security:

Biophysical Processes and Economic Choices at Local, Regional, and Global

Levels. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2003. Print.

Wilson, Edward O. The Future of Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. Print.


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What I learned as anWhat I learned as anWhat I learned as anWhat I learned as an

FGCUFGCUFGCUFGCU Environmental MajorEnvironmental MajorEnvironmental MajorEnvironmental Major

Attending FGCU as an Environmental Studies major was one of the best moves of my

life. Its curriculum is designed to not only to teach the sciences, but also policy and how the

concepts of environmentalism and sustainability fit into our society. The major encourages

(and sometimes forces) students to think critically, even about issues taken as axiomatic by

most environmentalists. I enjoyed discussions with my professors, lecturers and fellow

students on some of the most relevant issues of our time. For me, the most valuable courses

were those which examined policy rather than science. I thinks this is because most of the timeI feel as though the real issues are not within science communities, for in most instances I think

the scientific establishment does a good job of reaching consensus within itself on major issues,

such as global climate change, for example.

The real challenge is implementation of science-based policy. At this point, peoples

politics, religions, special interests and long-held biases present a surprisingly formidable

barrier. Learning about the genesis of such monumental milestones such as the Clean Air Act,

Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act has given me a sense of what can be accomplished

and the political strategies required to bring successful policy to fruition.

The Environmental Studies curriculum takes seriously not only the development of

individual student, but also the importance of working in groups and teams to achieve a goal.

As Steve Pinker has pointed out, nothing important in science is done by individuals acting

alone any more. As for policy, modern democracies preclude the individual from creating

broad policy. The real world is not and probably never has been a place where a great

intellectual achievement is the work of a single mind. Even Einstein and Newton admitted to

standing on the shoulders of giants. A student cannot succeed in this curriculum as the lone

wolf; the courses are designed and delivered to teach teamwork. There are few things more

important in life than knowing your own strengths and weaknesses when working with others,and students in Environmental Studies learn of their own strengths and limits.

In conclusion, I would like to say that there are a lot of majors out there, from fashion

merchandising to pre-med. I feel fortunate that I discovered the one that was right for me.

And I have had the opportunity to meet and work with a lot of like-minded souls, and I look

forward to working with them as colleagues in the future.


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Service Learning: Marco Island Cleanup

For my Foundation of Civic Engagement class, I joined a group to do a Beach Cleanup and

Beautification project. It took place on Marco Island South Beach. It proved to be a lot of

work and a lot of fun.

I felt reasonably satisfied with the outcome of the project. As expected, the end project

morphed to a degree from the original proposal, but I felt very comfortable with the eventual

outcome in that it remained focused on the original intent, which was to improve in some small

incremental way a particular ecosystem. The project in its final form consisted of two rather

different activities, but both related to the proposed goal. The clean-up portion was the most

straight forward conceptually, but the more difficult to organize and to provide logistics. The

second portion, a pair of custom painted recycling containers might best be described as an

outreach effort to heighten the awareness of the beach visitors, but they also had an added

benefit of recharging the attitudes of some of the business and local government staff. In all, I

felt that whatever shortcomings the project execution suffered, they were perhaps more due to

the constraints of trying to work with both within the framework of a universitys semester

schedule and the timelines of a municipal government. Due to some scheduling difficulties, I

felt that we were not able to fully engage the student body of FGCU, but at least I have idea how

to deal with that (primarily a little longer range allowed in the planning stage).

After the initial proposal, I was a little uncertain how to proceed. The team member who

really came up with the idea worked in the area (Marco beach) and was enthusiastic, but didnt

seem to know exactly how to move forward. I had some past experience in this type of activity,

but not in Marco, and didnt know the mood of the local community. Through the help of


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SeaGrant, I hooked up with the Environmental Specialist for the City of Marco Island, Nancy

Richie. She invited our team to come to their next Beach Advisory Committee (BAC), and so

we did. Attending this meeting was, in my opinion, the single best thing we did as a team. As a

result of the meeting, we had the full support the city government, also the Friends of Tigertail

Beach, the most important environmental volunteer group in the area, and sponsorship by

Publix.

The recycling cans we made were in

response to the citys need for some colorful

containers with a positive message (i.e., not a

list of NOs at the front of the beach!). The

fact that the cans were so enthusiastically

received is because the cans were something

they wanted when we first talked. I give us an

outstanding for this component, because we did

everything right:

A. We approached the local leaders through a respected intermediary, SeaGrant.

B. We got dressed up and attended a meeting of the appropriate governing group, Marco

Island BAC. We made a good impression, stated our goals. Other members of the

meeting were (surprisingly to me) very supportive. I did not expect that their

interests would align as tightly with ours as they did.

C. We listened to what they wanted, and made it part of our plan.

Nancy Richie likes her new recycling cans


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In the beginning, we started with one team member, me, calling some people in the

community of government. I called the local SeaGrant agent, Joy Hazell, whom I knew from

work, and she put me in contact with the Collier SeaGrant agent, who put me in touch with the

local government contact, Nancy Ritchie at Marco. These communications were by email and

telephone. Another team member, Josh, went more through the local business community,

getting some level of support from his own employer as well as the management of several

beachfront hotels. We prepared a flyer for posting and intended to use a class email roster to

raise interest, but some scheduling changes made us hold back on the email and delay the flyer

distribution, for fear of having students showing up at the right place at the wrong time. The

same scheduling issues kept us from placing ads in local papers, another appropriate

communication tool for this type of activity.

Other communities we communicated with included the volunteer group Friends of

Tigertail Beach and local sponsors who offered their assistance as a result of the BAC meeting.

In this regard, the BAC meeting proved to be our most powerful communication tool. What with

the proliferation of electronic social and professional networking, I sometimes forget that old-

fashioned meetings and face time with the interested parties is invaluable. Certainly it was in

this case.

As a non-traditional student, this course comes at a time in my life when I have an

interest in academic study to enhance my experience and knowledge rather than the latter

enhancing the former. Obviously the goals of this project related to my Environmental major.

Although I have a lot of practical experience in a lot of areas and ecosystems in Southwest

Florida, until now I had no experience at Marco Island. So, regarding Marco Island and South

Beach, I learned something every day I was down there. In any discipline involving human and


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nature phenomena, you can never know everything and there are always fresh factoids, if not

new concepts. Its impossible to predict which one of todays tidbits of information is

tomorrows missing piece of the puzzle, but Im already chock full of tidbits. Im really

relying on FGCUs academic program to provide an intellectual framework of which

happenstance has not provided.

On Marco Dunes: what its all about

On the following pages is the flyer I made for the event and an article on the event

published in the Marco Eagle:


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The City of Marco Islands Beach Advisory Committee sponsors monthly Beach Sweeps where

local government employees join with select volunteers to walk Marco Beach from the South

Beach entrance to the beginning of Tiger Tail Beach to the north. This two mile beach walk is an

excellent opportunity for Environmental Majors to familiarize themselves with one of Southwest

Floridas most important Beach ecosystems, and how local government responds to the stresses of

development upon significant ecosystems. Plus, its a day at one of the worlds premier resort

beaches. Its worth checking out.

Marco Beach Sweep

Toward a Sustainable Future

F G C U E N V I R O N M E N T A L S T U D I E S

Marco Island Beach

and dunes

SundayMay 22, 2011Marco South Beach9:00 AM

Call Neil at:239.246.1702or email :[email protected] reserve


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Bernardo Bezos and Neil Ayers on South Beach


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I also belong to the Beach Advisory Committee and we want to get this beach clean

and keep it that way, he said. In an area where the economy depends on our

beautiful beaches, thats important.

Graduate student April Olson is majoring in environmental studies. The real estate

professional has seen firsthand how urban sprawl can impact the environment and

with the overgrowth of high rises in the background it was easy to see why she was

impassioned to help with this weekends clean up. Olson says instead of complaining

about how people cause environmental damage, she wanted to do something to

change it.

My degree is a combination of policy and science, and Im interested in smart growth

in green cities among other things, she said. I said when I turned 40 I would pursue

what Im passionate about, and this is it.

For Neil Ayers, it was a family affair. His wife of 30 years Patty Loverock, a reading

teacher at Fort Myers High School pitched in to help.

I believe in pristine beaches and love the coastline, so I want to support the FGCU

effort to keep this environment exquisite, she said.

The Ayers brought along family friend Bob Deane who knows all too well what a little

litter cam become if left unchecked. Deane lives near Lake Erie and is a teacher in

London, Ontario.

I have seen the degradation and pollution on a major scale at Lake Erie to the point

where you couldnt even go in, and its important to everyone, especially to the

seasonal visitor to see the beaches here in good shape, he said.

The South Marco Beach Access is located on South Collier Boulevard on Marco

Island and is open from 8 a.m. to sundown. Parking for the beach access is located

on Swallow Avenue across from South Collier Boulevard. To volunteer for a beach

clean-up or other beach service, contact the City of Marco Island at (239) 389-5003.

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Letter to the Editor: Liberals just dont get itPublished 5/26/2011 at 1:45 p.m. 11 comments

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Collier commissioner Coyle accused ofstifling public commentPublished 5/24/2011 at 6:08 p.m. 3 comments

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On the following pages is a theatrical review of a play put on by FGCUs Theatre Lab inthe spring of 2011.


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Ayers Suit My Heart

Neil Ayers

Professor HartleyIDS3300

Suit My Heart

Suit My Heartis a multimedia presentation by the FGCU Theatre Lab

performed at the FGCU Arts Complex, directed by FGCU faculty member

Michelle Hayford, PhD. The production is a collaboration between Theatre

Lab and Footsteps to the Future, a Ft. Myers-based nonprofit established

to help young women transition from Floridas child foster care program to

successful adulthood.

As the organizational website points out, Foster care children age

out of the system at age 18 and lose most government support services (par 2). While a

program intended for children cannot necessarily be criticized for not being supportive of young

adults, the transition can be difficult, stressful and often tragic. As the founder of Footsteps

notes in the plays program, roughly 50% of these young people will fall prey to crime, drug

and alcohol abuse, homelessness or unwanted pregnancies in their adult lives (1). The title of

the play Suit My Heart, comes from a local poet, B. Brodowsky, according to same program,

who writes Miming was never the best profession for my heartnoI think love would suitmy heart better (1). The excerpt is evocative of ee cummings i carry your heart, except that

the romantic poignance of i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) is superseded by an equally

compelling cry of a heart devoid of love denied.

Suit My Heartconsists of a seemingly unending series of 18 sketches featuring song,

dance, mime, brief dramatic episodes, monologues and multimedia (including clever buzzing

text) to call attention to the plight of not only transitioning teens but broken homes, dysfunctional

families and general hardships that many young people face while growing up. In aggregate, its

moral might be that the thing these children need most is love; and providing that missing love is

the best resolution for their troubled lives.

Suit My Heartis one of a series of civically engaged works performed by the Theater

Lab. Its sketches were inspired by interviews of young women in and out of foster care, as well

as their mentors and advocates (TheaterLab 2). It presents the adult workers of Floridas foster


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Ayers Suit My Heart

care programs as being nearly as victimized as their clients. It draws attention to the fact that

there is a quasi-Catch 22 aspect for the agents of Floridas Department of Children & Families,

in which the only way you can really care for these children is to not care, because if you care

you wont last long. It is a revolving door of compassionate newcomers who burn out,

surrounded by a of cadre insensitive apparatchiks. Not a glowing account of a system. And it is

a system that appears to becoming only more stressed rather than less by the current

political climate of Florida.

As a civically engaged work, Suit My Heartneeds to be evaluated twice, once for its

artistic merit and once again for its cultural impact. Works that succeed on both counts are few

and far between. (Think of Dickens Oliver Twist, Twains Huckleberry Finn, or Upton

Sinclairs The Jungle as examples. Think of a work like Griffiths Birth of a Nation as well,

glorifying a cause less than noble. There needs to be a degree of critical thinking involved when

assessing artistic works of social commentary.) Suit My Hearts greatest assets artistically are

the passionate performances of its young actors. In scenes which often lack dramatic context,

their performances project and interpret the emotional significance of each scene. When they are

given the opportunity, such as in the scenes between the sister and brother (Brother Sister 1,2,3)

and sister and sister (Sisters 1,2), their performances convey an intensity and empathy for their

character that makes the audience hunger to know more of their lives. Even when reduced to

holding hands and swaying to the easy rhythms of sympathetic sounds, they convey an honest

sincerity in a scene that with lesser talents (and less passion) might easily descend into farce.

There is a bit of a tendency for the playwright to obfuscate her

message, but this is compensated by her excellent program notes in the

role of director. Prose may be her forte. It would be interesting to watch

these young talents tackle a dramatic script worthy of their gravitas and

urgency of the message.

Feiffer


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Ayers Suit My Heart

Works Cited

Feiffer, Jules. "A Dance to the Loss of Innocence." Comic strip. Village Voice [New

York] 2 Dec. 1959. Print.

FGCU TheatreLab. TL002: A Performance Constellation: Suit My Heart. Ft. Myers:

FGCU TheatreLab, 2011. Print.

FootSteps to the Future - Program for Girls Aging out of Foster Care. Web. 12 Apr.

2011. .


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On the next page is a poster assignment on the Magnificent Frigate Bird.

During my research, I came across this description of the bird; Id like to share it:

When the morning light gladdens the face of nature, and while the warblers are yet waiting, in silence

the first rays of the sun, whose appearance they will hail with songs of joy, the Frigate-bird, on extended

pinions, sails from his roosting place. Slowly and gently, with retracted neck he glides, as if desirous of

quietly trying the renovated strength of his wings. Toward the vast deep he moves, rising apace, and

before any other bird views the bright orb emerging from the waters. Pure is the azure of the heavens,

and rich the deep green of the smooth sea below; there is every prospect of the finest weather; and now

the glad bird shakes his pinions; and far up into the air, far beyond the reach of man's unaided eye, he

soars in his quiet but rapid flight. There he floats in the pure air, but thither can fancy alone follow him.

Would that I could accompany him! But now I see him again, with half-closed wings, gently falling

towards the sea. He pauses awhile, and again dives through the air. Thrice, four times, has he gradually

approached the surface of the ocean; now he shakes his pinions as violently as the swordsman whirls his

claymore; all is right; and he sweeps away, shooting to this side and that, in search of prey.

-John James Audubon, Birds of America, volume VII, page 13


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Regional Water Resources Management Research at Florida Gulf Coast University

was the title of my senior research project.

The poster on the next page was presented at the Southwest Florida Regional Watershed Council on 19

November 2011.


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Future goals and plans:

The highest duty in the World is the proper ordering of the World

-Attributed to Flavius Stilicho, Master General of Rome (Magistar mililtumus) (ca. 359 408) by R.A. Lafferty in his

history The Fall of Rome, perhaps the Roman poet Claudian as his source. Lafferty did not cite (unlike Gibbon, who

arguably invented the practice) so a scholarly citation cannot be had.

History is clear, however, that Stilicho believed the Roman Empire to be a manifestation of

Gods will (and his god was the God of Christ and the Holy Spirit). But the words also describe

my sense of Sustainability perfectly and absolutely.

It is a mission statement for me.

It is worth mentioning that Stilicho was betrayed by his emperor, Honorius, and that Rome fell,

and that a millennium of civilization ended, and that a millennium of darkness followed.

I would like to be one of the people who find the way to avoid the on of darkness. But if we

fail, there is this consolation:

Earth - The Pale Blue Dot

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you everheard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident

religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of

civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer,

every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the

history of our species lived here - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

Carl Sagan, from "Pale Blue Dot"


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Documents

Ayers Portfolio