Spring 2008 Bulletin

B U L L E T I N

Spring 2008Spring 2008

L L E T I NB U

CATE

MISSION STATEMENT: Through commitment, scholarship, companionship, and service, each member of the Cate community contributes to what our founder called “The spirit of this place...all compounded of beauty and virtue, quiet study, vigorous play, and hard work.”

www.cate.org

EditorDon [email protected]

DesignPhillip Collier Designs

Copy EditorRoss Robins and Gaby Edwards

PhotographyMary Fish Arango and Don Orth

HeadmasterBenjamin D. Williams IV

Director of DevelopmentMeg Bradley

Leadership Gifts and Planned GivingTerry Eagle

Cate Fund DirectorGrayson Bryant '95

Associate Alumni DirectorJana Miller

Centennial Events, Communica-tions, and Special Gifts DirectorLeslie Benedict Turnbull '85

Centennial Major Gifts DirectorRob Dunton '79

Centennial Special ProjectsEric Swain

Director of AdmissionCharlotte Brownlee '85

The Cate Bulletin is published three times a year by the Cate School and is distributed free of charge to alumni, parents, and friends of the School. Send correspondence and address changes to:

EditorCate Bulletin1960 Cate Mesa RoadCarpinteria, CA [email protected] The Cate Bulletin is printed by Ventura Printing on recycled, mixed source paper.

You can download a copy of the Cate Bulletin at catealumni.org/?page=publications

B U L L E T I N

CATE

2 C A T E S C H O O L B U L L E T I N

Cover: Art by Gregg HinlickyInside cover: Pencil sketch on the Kern by Patrick CollinsBack cover: “Garden with Poppies” 2006 - Oil painting by Patrick Collins

CONTENTS

24 A Step in the Right Direction Cheryl PowersThis new “interpretive trail” on the Mesa opens up a world of

learning opportunities.

6 Sustaining Cate Don OrthA brief history of environmentalism at Cate.

44 Class Notes

16 Th e Climate Society Dana Edwards ’09A student group investigates energy use on the Mesa.

Silver Buckshot Daniel Emmett '87Only a combination of alternative fuel can solve our energy crisis.32

Oil on My Brain Bruce King ’72How the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 awakened environmentalism in

one alumnus.

28

5 From the Headmaster Benjamin D. Williams IV

37 Green AlumniAlumni write about the greenness in their lives, followed by a list of

some green alumni businesses (p.42).

20 Th e Greening of Cate Sandi PierceA survey of the green components at Cate now and in the future.

18 Points of View Lane W. Sharman Jr. ’71 and Chris Yager ’85Two alumni share their differing views on global warming.

24

28

6

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FROM THE ARCHIVES

Santa Barbara School in the 1930s. The original school buildings

were constructed in 1928. Notice that the current main road to the

top of Cate Mesa is missing.

from the headmaster

We talk a great deal at Cate about the power of place, and rightly so; it is a central element of our mission statement. There is a spirit that pervades this Mesa, a feeling of possibility, of collaboration, of purpose. And it exists in part because of the unique marriage of human endeavor and jaw-dropping, soul-stirring natural majesty. That is a precious mixture—one that few other communities can claim, and one that we owe to the foresight of the man who gave this school its name and, with mother nature, its distinctive spirit. Strangely, though, my appreciation of the union here of endeavor and environment can occasionally give rise to musings on other places I’ve been, and communities far less fortunate than Cate’s. One in particular, also by the sea, presents something of a counterpoint to ours. It is a place that became a victim, along with all of those who inhabited it.

It is in Texas, where Ginger and I lived for fi ve years. We were based in Houston, and occasionally to fi nd some respite from the heat and humidity we would drive to the Gulf Coast to get a little beach time. Galveston was our preferred destination. It was close, not too crowded, and as long as the wind was blowing onshore you couldn’t smell all the refi neries in nearby Texas City. But Galveston always had a funny feel to it. There is a section of town that is “historic” but it doesn’t exude the timeless classicism of many older cities and towns. It looks more the way I envision Miss Havisham’s home in Great Expectations—once stately and stylish but gone-by, neglected, decaying. There are new sections of town that are quite spiffy, of course, and along the many beaches all sorts of homes

perched high on wooden or concrete stilts. No living spaces are on ground level, which gives the various neighborhoods an odd effect, as though all the houses are hiking their knickers up to avoid getting wet or dirty. In hindsight, that should have given it away—that something had happened in Galveston, something that made such architecture necessary.

It wasn’t until the year after we left Texas, while rummaging through a bookstore, that I came across Isaac’s Storm, an account of the 1900 hurricane that all but obliterated what had to that point become one of the most prosperous cities in the country. Thought to be impervious to storm surges because of Galveston Island’s long stretches of shallow water, warm temperatures, and generally calm seas, the city suffered in part because those very things actually intensifi ed the impact of the storm. The wind literally drove the water over the sea wall and into the city itself. No one foresaw such a possibility. It was a time, after all, of extraordinary human arrogance, especially in the face of nature and her capabilities. Isaac Cline, the city’s chief meteorologist and the book’s namesake, was no more at fault than the culture that surrounded and informed him when the storm claimed nearly 10,000 of Galveston’s citizens and most of its structures. Tragically, the sense of loss is still there today.

Now it is probably within our nature to forgive those who could not foresee that deadly storm. How could they have known, after all, especially given their misguided belief in their own invincibility? Nature had been conquered by then, or so the average citizen believed. I wonder, though, if a century from now we will be

so easily forgiven for what we could not or did not anticipate. Are we—like Isaac Cline—ignoring or misinterpreting the signs of another coming storm, this one destined to strike not an isolated human population but the myriad ecosystems and life forms that exist on this planet? Is the costly arrogance of one turn of the century destined to distinguish this one as well? One could certainly argue, as many do, that we continue to fail to act in support of the planet on which we live, whose resources we risk exhausting, whose air we pollute so prolifi cally, and whose signs of abuse we overlook or ignore so cavalierly. If there is indeed a larger storm coming, will we be willing and able to act before we, like Galveston, are overrun?

Indirectly, that question underlies this issue of the Bulletin. Our focus at Cate on sustainability, conservation, stewardship of our precious and limited resources is not a response to the trends of the day, but an attempt to speak with our actions on a topic that means literally the world to us. This community evolved originally out of a belief that scholarship owes its power and relevance to a marriage with the natural world and in the community of stewards of that very union. No principle could be more relevant today or more central to our future. And perhaps no community is more equipped to embrace such stewardship or contribute to its ideological diaspora than Cate is. Certainly our founder would expect no less.

Servons,

Benjamin D. Williams IV

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High noon in the back country. Curtis Wolsey Cate enjoys a bite to eat and the paper.Photo courtesy of the Cate Archives.

SUSTAINING


A brief history of environmentalism at Cateby Don Orth

Mr. Cate was a rugged individualist, an avid horseman, and a lover of the outdoors. He

brought his knowledge of and reverence for nature with him across the Rocky Mountains to the undeveloped California coast. When the time came for Mr. Cate to establish his own school, he deliberately sought a quiet natural setting, amid the western oak trees he so admired, offering a traditional eastern education in a building with open porches. When the young schoolmaster, looking for a space his school could call its own, fi nally found what he called “our mesa” in those early years, he saw wide open spaces of sage green and dusky purple chaparral, soaring sandstone mountains, and a vast blue ocean he once acknowledged as “the greatest asset of the school.”

When Mr. Cate built his own campus on this Mesa, his deep respect for the environment was refl ected in the School’s layout. Long House, High House, Schoolhouse, and the Raymond Commons

were designed to compliment their surroundings, and they formed—along with the Pacifi c Ocean to the South—a traditional scholastic quadrangle. The green space we know now as Senior Lawn was the heart of this quad and of the School, overseeing what is still one of the most stunning views in the West.

Nature was then, as it is now, an indelible part of Mr. Cate’s school and its curriculum. During the School’s fi rst three decades, horse trekking, hiking, and camping were commonplace. School journals from the period log as many as 40 organized trips into the outdoors every year; many unrecorded treks into the mountains and down to the beach were the result of impromptu decisions by schoolboys and their masters, who shared their Head’s love for wide open spaces.

Of course there were boys who longed for their dorm-room beds and the relative comfort of four solid walls, but most students valued these trips as much as

or more than their “formal” education. To be on a horse, in the chaparral or at the beach, with a change of clothes and a pack of food, was paradise, as was the experience and camaraderie gained on such voyages. Self suffi cient, confi dent, as at ease on a horse as on their own feet, the students we now know as the “Old Boys” came to experience, revere, and care for nature in a way few of their contemporaries could understand.

Watching the development of Carpinteria around him, Mr. Cate worried about “the trail building, riding, and camping” that were so essential to his inclusion of outdoor excursions in his residential curriculum. In his book School Days in California, he wrote: “I felt that our mesa would be better protected and our riding on unpaved roads and neighboring trails secured…should we add to our real estate as soon as possible.”

Thanks to this bit of wisdom and foresight, Cate has remained buffered

FORSAKING THE INDUSTRIALIZED EAST COAST, CURTIS WOLSEY CATE TRAVELED ACROSS THE UNITED STATES TO TEACH IN THE “WILD WEST” DURING THE FIRST DECADE OF THE 20TH CENTURY.

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against the encroachments of outside development, and today’s Mesa is as gloriously, naturally situated as ever. Likewise, its students continue to enjoy and appreciate the outdoors, albeit in slightly different ways.

Two world wars and a changing economy and culture considerably altered life at Cate. The horse trekking of the 20s and 30s gave way to more self-propelled jaunts once horses disappeared from the Mesa, and an intensifi ed program of competitive sports that was started in the early 40s and 50s meant less time for long trips into the hills. But the call of the wild continued to sound at Cate, and alumni from those days fondly remember the trips they did take, hiking and canoeing, surfi ng and camping. As always, those boys were admonished by Mr. Cate and

Henry’s Camp in the Sierras. The Class of 1988 on Activities Week 1986. Photo courtesy of the Cate Archives.

The record of camping trips taken during the academic year 1924–1925. Destinations are shown in columns; students and teachers shown in rows.

8

Kirk Phelps ’77 (Cate faculty 1991–1996)

Robert Bowler (Cate faculty 1969–1986)

his successors to respect the terrain they crossed, to preserve it and steward it for days to come. Woe to the hapless Old Boy who left a campfi re unbanked or a piece of refuse littering the sands near the School’s beloved beach shack. Cate School faculty were, even then, sticklers for preservation and care.

The 60s, 70s, and early 80s brought the outdoors slowly back into focus as an offi cial part of the School’s program, as teachers sought ways to use the outdoors as part of their teaching. Notable among these was Rob Bowler, history and anthropology teacher, lacrosse coach, and passionate outdoorsman. “Ba,” as he was known, believed nothing made a strong, capable man out of a boy (or, later, a powerful, self-reliant woman out of a girl) than a good spell in the wild. Rob took students on weekend backpacking and fi shing trips into the Sespe wilderness and later the Kern. Living off the grid was second nature to Rob, and his ease in this setting impressed his students with an alternative perspective on outdoor living.

Charles Berolzheimer ’78 remembers: “As sophomores, our class took a week-long trip to the Yosemite Institute...During this trip we learned about the forest ecosystem, practiced orienteering and participated in other activities...My most memorable moment of any of those packing trips was Rob showing up at camp with two California Quail to cook up for dinner that he claimed to have just killed by throwing a single rock. Whether extremely green activists out there would consider that a good example of environmental stewardship or not is hard to say, though it was at least effi cient in killing two birds with one stone.”

At the same time “Ba” Bowler and his colleagues were helping Cate students learn about nature and the environment we live in, another kind of environmental awareness was pervading the greater world—and Cate. The Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 and the subsequent organization of Earth Day in 1970 created an awareness of how destructive human beings could be to this fragile world. Rob Dunton ’79 recalls: “My TV was showing me how we were destroying our earth. I saw litter everywhere, then, driven by a national litter campaign, roadsides, beaches, and parks were cleaned up. DDT had recently been banned and the Endangered Species Act had just been enacted as I was entering Cate in 1974. During my four years at Cate, Love Canal and Three Mile Island hit. Earth Day had become like an annual mini-Woodstock where hippie activism was calling out the capitalist-industrial-military complex to clean up its mess.”

Cate students, like so many of their peers around the country and the world,

began to see the world as a planet in need of preservation. A visionary group that included Cate faculty as well as their charges began a movement of environmental and ecological awareness. The Outdoor Program, meanwhile, took all this renewed interest in nature as an impetus to grow and expand.

In 1981, Terry Eagle, then Assistant to the Head, organized an Activities Week—a series of trips lead by faculty to various places, many of them outdoors. In 1984, after his return from a sabbatical year of graduate study, Dean of Students Bob Bonning formalized these trips into the fall Outings Week that continues as part of Cate’s calendar today. As they do now, the juniors hiked into the Kern River Canyon, and the freshman class began its long association with Pyles Camp in the southern Sierra Nevada. That fi rst year the sophomores spent the week in the Upper Sespe canyon—a destination that has given way in recent years to the more alpine environs of Yosemite.

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Some members of the Green Team from l-r: Stephanie Ruys de Perez ’10, Cascade Zak ’09, Meghan Falvey ’10, Libby Parker ’10, Haddon Pereira ’10. Photo by Mary Fish Arango.

Soon after the establishment of Outings Week, Kirk Phelps ’77 returned to the Mesa as a faculty member, bringing with him an energy, conviction, and personal passion for the wild rivaling that of Mr. Cate, Rob Bowler, and other great Cate outdoorsmen-and-women. Kirk dreamed of incorporating wilderness experiences and education even further into the Cate curriculum, and he was joined and supported in this effort by another alumnus and fellow faculty member, Paul Denison ’79.

Together, Paul and Kirk offered natural excursions for Cate students whenever and wherever they could. Hiking and kayaking, camping and surfi ng, sailboarding, fl y-fi shing, backpacking, and skiing…Cate’s new generation of wilderness advocates promoted these experiences, always making sure to include lessons in environmental awareness and stewardship in every trip. No one present in assembly that day will ever forget the silence that descended on the Hitchcock Theatre one memorable moment as the full understanding of what Kirk meant by “pack it in; pack it out” fi nally dawned, and an entire class of juniors realized they would be packing a week’s worth of refuse...in every sense

of the word…out of the mountains with them.

With the introduction of no-impact camping, Cate had indeed reached a new level of environmental awareness and acceptance. Formalization of the program could only follow, and that process was assisted by the return of yet another alumnus to teach on the Mesa. Ned Bowler ’83, very much the son of his father, took on the Outdoor Program after assisting Kirk for a year.

“His skill for living agreeably with nature does more than impress us; it inspires us. Ned is a living, walking example of what ought to be our goal as a community: to live in a way that feels comfortable without taking too great a toll on our environment.” (Meghan Crandell ’03, “A Look into Cate Environmentalism,” Bulletin Spring 2003)

In 1989, Paul started a curricular enrichment option similar to Ned’s “Wilderness” course, except that it was “no credit” and was offered in the evenings as a kind of directed studies. The course became an established part of the curriculum in 1999.

In 2008, “Wilderness” is still offered,

and the Outdoor Program is a sanctioned daily athletic option. The inventory of equipment used for the Outdoor Program and stored in the Barns has grown exponentially to include equipment for whitewater rafting and kayaking, rock climbing, surfi ng, mountain biking, sea kayaking, backpacking, and fl yfi shing, refl ecting the School’s commitment to integrate the outdoors as part of a Cate student’s overall experience. The School also uses the high ropes course and a required overnight at Bee Camp as part of the Freshman Seminar program—the fi rst time, it seems, that there is a mandatory outdoors component in our academic curriculum as well as in our extracurricular and athletic ones.

CONSERVATION

At the same time the Old Boys were learning to live in and appreciate nature, others on

the Mesa were enacting an early form of environmentalism born of practicality, necessity, and thrift. In the early days, the School grew its own produce and husbanded its own livestock for meat and milk. Fresh water has always been precious in the dry environs of Carpinteria, and before city water fl owed up the Mesa, great care was taken to conserve this natural resource.


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Ned Bowler ’83 and Will Holmes.Photo by Mary Fish Arango.

Landscaping was drought-tolerant, and while hygiene (even in the days before co-education) was encouraged, waste was not. The cold showers advocated by Mr. Cate were understandably only long enough to get the job done.

Tom Savage, the school’s handyman in those days, was an early proponent of conservation. When faced with a limited budget and limited resources, he conserved, reused, and recycled the supplies he had on hand. In fact, it is likely that he would have done the same if faced with surplus of such supplies. With Mr. Savage, there was simply no reason to waste. Thomas Escher ’65 writes:

“Tom Savage really started me and many other Cate students thinking about reusing items…now we call it recycling. On work programs, Tom always had us reuse cans from the kitchen to pour tar in the cracks of the Mesa driveway. Broken shovels were cut and made into other gardening/maintenance tools, scraps of wood were saved in the carpenter’s shop to be later used on either student projects or work programs.”

The early lessons taught by Mr. Savage were adopted and expanded by subsequent Cate faculty members, among them Director of Music Frank Ellis. Idealist, optimist, and conservationist in every sense of the word, Mr. Ellis rode his bicycle everywhere—even to

Santa Barbara—and, along with his wife Sandy Ellis ’02 (Hon.), began a program of conservation and recycling long before those words entered the regular American vernacular. With experience as an urban planner, Frank knew exactly how an excess of garbage could impact a community, and he pitched concepts of reusing and recycling to faculty and the student body, eventually driving the guilty to cart their recyclables to a garage where the Sprague Gymnasium now stands. Every week Frank and a few intrepid volunteers would sift and divide the materials and later bring them to redemption centers in Carpinteria and Summerland.

“We certainly appreciate the environmental message that Frank Ellis brought to the campus,” says Cheryl Powers. “He played a big part in launching our recycling campaign with his assembly skits and songs, and his occasional passion for ’dumpster diving,’ rescuing valuable resources from the trash bins on campus.”

It was a thankless, often dirty, job, but Frank Ellis and his converts did it without complaint and with vigor. He preached in assemblies, educating the Cate Community on what to recycle, how to recycle, and even how to vote for government offi cials based on their environmental stance. His energy and dedication still lives on the Mesa today as

others continue the mission.

Bob Bonning took up the torch from Frank in the early 90’s, continuing to cajole faculty into recycling, and gathering volunteers to sort and cart the recyclables off campus every other week. Coordinating the Outdoor Program full time, Kirk Phelps ’77 also was able to organize a budget to bring recycling into the dorms, and involved Outdoors students to drive the task.

The connection between the Outdoor Program and the growing “green” activism at Cate was undeniable. “Our Outdoor Program,” says Bob Bonning, “greased the skids for the recycling program.” It is natural for a love of the outdoors to lead to taking action to save it—the two are intricately and irreversibly intertwined.

Ned Bowler ’83 took charge of the recycling program in 1996. As the leader of the Outdoor Program, Ned was as comfortable in the outdoors as some are in a fi ve-star hotel, and with this connection came a deep sense of responsibility towards the earth. As recycling expanded into the dorms, Ned and his volunteers (later his Chore Group), hauled materials to the old garage. When the garage was knocked down to make room for the Sprague Gymnasium, Ned helped build a new shed for recyclables with his own hands.

Organic Gala apples. Photo by Mary Fish Arango.


Bill Boyde ’00 recalls: “I remember Ned Bowler telling me all about the recycling center at Cate. I’ve never seen him so serious; he told me that a cigarette butt someone dropped on the ground felt like they put it out on his arm. I always say, ‘You dropped something back there, better go pick that up,’ when I see someone drop a cigarette butt to this day. Ned was probably the beginning of my environmental awareness, and I’ve been seriously invested ever since.”

Faculty member Will Holmes took over the recycling program in 2001, and raised the bar for the entire Cate Community. He organized the 25-person chore group called “The Green Team” who today coordinate, promote, and carry out recycling practices. The group is split up into Recyclers, who collect and empty the bins, Composters, who gather scraps from the kitchen for the organic garden, and Reducers, who cancel catalogues for people who don’t want them or are no longer here. “What they’re doing is important,” says Will. “They are making a difference.”

These days, we hear regular updates in assembly about the Green Team’s contests, awards, and occasional championships, keeping awareness of recycling at the forefront of our minds. Will Holmes’s dedication to sustainability is moving, and he walks the walk. Recently, a student was pleased to discover that her one-page math test had random text printed on the back. Will supports using both sides, if one must use paper at all.

For a quiet, soft-spoken man, Will Holmes has a lot more to say when he’s talking green. He reminds us to “reduce, reuse, and recycle.” Take one trip into Santa Barbara instead of two. Bring your own

canvas bags to the store, use glassware instead of disposable items. Be thoughtful. And if you must use disposable materials, recycle or reuse them as best you can. “It just makes sense,” he says. “I think of Frank Ellis every time I walk by the dumpsters when I see recyclables in the trash. We share a deep commitment to the environment.”

“Cate’s mission is to educate,” say Will. “If students leave this school more aware, they also might infl uence their schools, their businesses, their families. They will bring this message into their lives, and that is one of the most important things we can do.”

GOING ORGANIC

Though we are not the same school whose garden and livestock provided a good deal of the

food consumed on the Mesa, our “self-suffi ciency” is a little closer to home than it has been for many years—Tim Fox, Executive Chef, is proud of the progress in Cate’s kitchen and Raymond Commons. In the fall of 2005, Cate began a partnership with local farmers through the Farmer’s Market Association. This program brings fresh, organic, locally-grown produce to area restaurants and food service companies and is part of the growing “Slow Food USA” movement. “The most wonderful aspect of buying foods from our local growers is the quality and freshness” says Tim. “Many of the items we receive are literally harvested and delivered to us within an hour or two of picking.”

Cate School was one of the fi rst organizations in the area to join the Farmer’s Market Association’s program. Over 50% of the vegetables and fruits consumed by Cate students and faculty

are locally grown and organic—a number limited only by market availability. Purple caulifl ower, mung beans and brussel sprouts still on the stalk, garlic-roasted peanuts, dried fruits, and local wild fl ower honey are just a few of the products supplied by our local markets. Ned sums it up: “Having local organic farmers deliver fresh food to Cate is fantastic for our community. It helps spread an awareness that we desperately need in this country—organic food means sustainable agriculture, which means healthy soil and, in turn, helps foster healthy people.”

Cate has also recently begun purchasing baked goods from “Our Daily Bread,” a bakery located in Santa Barbara. The School receives daily deliveries of freshly baked organic/vegan sandwich breads, ciabatta, and dinner rolls from this earth-friendly local business. In 2003, the kitchen also started passing all fruit and vegetable preparation scraps to Ned ’83 for use in his organic garden behind the tennis courts—a garden worked and supported on a volunteer basis by interested Cate students and faculty.

ECOLOGY IN THE ACADEMIC CURRICULUM

Given the School’s tendency toward environmentalism in other areas of Cate life, it is no wonder that

ecology and the study of human impact on the natural world is part of the classroom as well. Alumni of all generations recall an element of environmentalism in their science and history classes—a presence that has become sharpened in recent years.

“I remember teaching Chemistry in 1986, the year of the Chernobyl disaster. It was a wakeup call for me that everyone needs more education about environmental

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issues.” Cheryl Powers, master science teacher whose 20-year plus career on the Mesa includes numerous professional awards and recognitions, recalls exactly when her instruction on the ecology of the earth became much more than academic. While biology and chemistry courses in the 80s and 90s had a practical ecological component, including trips to waste treatment plants, oil refi neries, and water treatment facilities, study of the environment and humanity’s role in its destruction and preservation emerged gradually.

AP Environmental Science was added to the slate of Science Department offerings in 1999. This course has grown in popularity and was recognized by the College Board in 2004 as “the best in the world” for schools of fewer than 500 students. Cate students have gone on to pursue Environmental Studies in college, and quite a few Cate alumni are actively working in professions that have to do with alternative energy sources, green construction, or environmental management (see catealumni.org/?green). This year’s seniors are developing two separate environmental action plans—one for water conservation at Cate and one for energy conservation (“The Climate Society,” page 16). These plans were presented to the school administration and the Board of Trustees, and submitted to the Lexus Environmental Challenge—a national competition for high school students. Both plans won fi rst prize for the western region of the U.S. On a more local and personal note, last year the AP Environmental Science class developed a nature trail on the fi re road that winds down from Mesa House to Cate Mesa Road. (“A Step in the Right Direction,” page 24).

By virtue of its location, Cate has been able to take great academic advantage

of other abundant natural resources to educate its students about their place in and responsibility to the natural world. The School offers senior electives in oceanography and marine biology, allowing students to examine fi rsthand how global systems (e.g., tectonics, oceanic currents, prevailing weather patterns) impact and infl uence the world of living things in various marine systems. Marine Biology examines dominant marine communities from a broad ecological perspective, but always with an emphasis on local and global interdependence. As part of these classes, students visit local beaches, tidepools, and the Carpinteria Salt Marsh—ecosystems unique to our area. Students learn how even small changes in tides affect the tidepool ecosystems, how life changes drastically over just a few inches on the rocks in these tidal areas, and how temperature shifts might cause a population explosion in an invasive species while dramatically reducing the native species.

The Directed Studies and Science Research curriculum also offers students a chance to explore other areas of environmental science in detail. Last year, Jim Masker, Ned Bowler ’83 and Tim Su ’07 organized a visit by the National Outdoors Leadership School (NOLS) vegetable-oil-powered bus to raise awareness about alternative fuels. Prior to the visit, Tim had spent several weeks studying alternative fuels as part of a project for his Science Research class with teacher Cheryl Powers. The day before the bus arrived, Tim fi ltered the unwanted particles from oil gathered in the Cate kitchens using two different methods—water fi ltration combined with a micro fi lter and the micro fi lter alone—to make it clean enough to run the engine of the bus. He then explained to his schoolmates exactly how the process worked and how

such alternative fuels could affect global ecology and economy.

BUILDING GREEN

While the Cate community has always fostered awareness of the world around us, the

School itself embodies environmental sensitivity. Cate buildings are aesthetically in concert with the Mesa and suitable, as Mr. Cate once wrote “...for a boys’ school in California, where life should be plain and simple, much out-of-doors.”

Reginald Johnson’s Monterey Colonial Style, open-plan architecture consciously echoes and embraces the natural beauty of the place. Cate faculty member and Art Department Chair Patrick Collins writes: “Cate buildings...blend ‘indoors’ with ‘outside.’ Open courtyards, patios, porches, and walkways are common in open-plan architecture. There is no closed-in feeling; instead, the sense of openness (and, in winter, coldness) which Mr. Cate loved so well is much in evidence.”

As students live in dorms whose balconies look out to the hills or the Pacifi c, it is impossible to ignore the natural world and prevent it from affecting their lives. In this context, it is worth noting that current research fi nds a student’s surroundings have a profound impact on performance and general well being. Students who live and work in buildings with natural lighting show an increase in reading and math performance. Students who live in a space with “views” of the natural world show an increase in overall performance (data from United States Green Building Council). Well-designed ventilation in buildings reduces respiratory illness. Modern research only proves what Mr. Cate and his successors—during generations of building on the Mesa—knew intuitively.


As our scientifi c understanding of ecological impacts and sustainability has increased, so has Cate’s commitment to responsible building and maintenance practices. The buildings constructed during the Cate 2000 Capital Campaign were the fi rst on the Mesa to boast sustainable design, from the bamboo fl ooring in the faculty homes to the incorporation of passive solar heating. The buildings currently under construction are even more impressive in terms of sustainable design (“The Greening of Cate,” page 20).

Newer buildings are not the only ones getting the “green” treatment; Business Manager Sandi Pierce and the Buildings and Grounds staff regularly review and evaluate older structures and landscaping to determine if they can be adapted or replaced by more energy-effi cient, ecologically sound systems. “Every time we build anything new, upgrade, or landscape,” says Mrs. Pierce, “we consider the greenest option that will work. Cost is, of course, a factor in our decision making, but so is our responsibility to the environment. We use low or no VOC paints, recycled materials for building upgrades, CF lights, low fl ush toilets, and low fl ow

showerheads. Even these improve over the years, so we are always reevaluating the products and resources that we use. Although some things, like our recycling program, cost more, it is the right thing to do.”

We are reminded once again of the early days of our School, when Mr. Cate moved buildings rather than destroy and rebuild. Likely, the latter would have been cheaper, but Mr. Cate, consciously or not, carried the seeds of conservation in his blood…and those of us on the Mesa today continue to make these wise choices, even down to the one aspect of the Centennial Campaign master plan that calls for the repositioning of a faculty home—coincidentally one of the original school buildings originally moved from the bottom of the Mesa to the top—rather than the much cheaper but less environmentally and historically responsible destruction and replacement of the modest clapboard house.

SERVONS

Cate’s “green” history does not end here. We are making it every day, and making decisions with the

Earth very much in mind. Ecology and conservation are popular these days, and

sustainable design and environmentally friendly products are popping up around this country like mushrooms after a soft rain.

But it is not enough to hop on the bandwagon and hang on for a short, wild ride. Environmental consciousness is a community-wide endeavor that involves everyone: the headmaster and the gardener; the kitchen staff and the students; the teachers and the trustees. True environmentalism, as Mr. Cate seemed to know, requires education, not edicts, and commitment, not adherence to the latest trends. We are fortunate here on the Mesa to have a founder who set us on the right track, students who invested themselves in the cause, and faculty, staff, and administration who have bought into long-term solutions. Together, we will continue to steward this School, located in this beautiful and ecologically rich spot on our delicate planet Earth, for generations to come.

Cook House East dormitory. Photo by Don Orth.

15S P R I N G 2 0 0 8

At Cate there are many student groups with an agenda and an enthusiastic member-ship; however, few of these groups can match the determination of the Climate Society, a dedicated group of students with a clear goal: to signifi cantly reduce carbon emissions on the Mesa. Led by faculty advisor Cheryl Powers, the budding envi-ronmentalists Gabriela Hempfl ing ’09, Nick Brown ’09, Samantha Ryu ’08, Cascade Zak ’09, Michael Yoon ’09, Dana Edwards ’09, Allegra Roth ’10, Julien Vollering ’08, Maddie Johnston ’09, and Priscilla Wilson ’09 are succeeding in shrinking the carbon footprint of Cate School. As a direct result of their work, the School’s proverbial foot print is now several sizes smaller, and the birds, polar bears, and humans through-out the world give their thanks. For it is the goal of the Climate Society (though its effort is largely localized) to infl uence the greater world by setting an example of how to easily and effectively reduce energy consumption and therefore contribute less to global warming.

The society’s formation was sparked by the “Lexus Environmental Challenge,” a multi-step contest for schools nationwide. We in the Climate Society undertook part four of the contest, “Global Warming, Local Solutions.” The objective: to reduce CO2 emissions in one’s community. The chal-lenge does not specify how to accomplish this; rather, it leaves the creative processes and execution of such a plan up to its participants.

Our action plan was based on a simple premise: “that the impact of an individual on the environment, through his carbon footprint, is dependent on two factors: life-style and technology.” We therefore sought to alter the lifestyle of Cate’s inhabitants through educating and raising awareness, and to make signifi cant changes in the energy-related technology surrounding us.

Before any steps were taken, however, members of the team conducted a compre-hensive survey of Cate’s energy functions by interviewing the school’s Business Manager and its Directors of Buildings and Grounds, and then compiling the collected data for future comparison.

With a good idea of how things at Cate were running, environmentally speaking, we then got to work, brainstorming ideas about how to make our school a more energy-effi cient place. After putting our heads together and discussing for several meetings, we came up with a rough game plan for tackling the the problem with a twofold approach. Part 1 will use a dorm competition for environmental aware-ness to adjust the energy usage of Cate’s boarding students. Part 2 involves green technology.

The Climate Society conducted audits of each dormitory while all other students were in assembly, noting the numbers of lights, computers, and stereos left on. The results were signifi cant and encourag-ing. After announcing the fi ndings of our

fi rst audit (making sure to point out the performance of each dorm so as to induce a friendly competition), the following audit produced better results. In the survey conducted on January 22, fewer ceiling and auxiliary lights remained turned on during assembly, but even more impressive were the greatly reduced numbers of computers left with electricity-sucking monitors in full blare.

We will continue to raise awareness among the School’s boarding students. They are now considerably “greener” in their day-to-day lives, turning off lights and com-puter screens before leaving their rooms. Posters regarding water and paper towel consumption and energy use are posted in dorm hallways and bathrooms to remind students to keep up the good work. It is simple alterations like these—environ-mental considerations incorporated into daily functions—that, multiplied by the enormous population of our planet, will slow and perhaps bring entirely to a halt the process of global warming.

In addition to our work in educating Cate’s inhabitants, we helped implement new technologies in order to reduce energy consumption. We are assisting the School’s effort to switch many of Cate’s incandes-cent bulbs to fl uorescent ones. Classrooms and faculty homes now uses less electricity. We also proposed far more drastic facility changes for the future. We would like the School to invest in new Energy Star® certi-fi ed laundry machines and refrigerators,

The Climate Societyby Dana Edwards ’09


and to trade in its fl eet of gas-guzzling GM Yukons for hybrid vehicles such as the hybrid Mercury Mariner. Lastly, we investigated a long-term proposal of solar power for the entire School. These are changes that would have immediate and considerable impacts on Cate’s energy consumption, and possibly neutralize the School’s negative environmental impact. Such change, however, will make more signifi cant economic impact and therefore

requires more specifi c planning before it can be executed.

The Climate Society, over the course of about a month, made benefi cial changes in the environmental impact of the Cate com-munity. The School now produces fewer carbon emissions by consuming less elec-tricity, and its inhabitants are more mind-ful of their role in the grand scheme of the environment as it relates to global warm-

ing. The Society won the Climate Challenge of the Lexus Environmental Challenge for the Western region of the U.S. on Febru-ary 8. We have now qualifi ed to enter the fi nal challenge that requires teams to reach beyond the local community and inspire environmental action around the world. Who knows what inspiring advances in the name of a greener and more sustainable planet lie in store.

The Climate Society from l-r: Julien Vollering, Nick Brown ’09, Maddie Johnston’09, Michael Yoon ’09, Gabriela Hempfl ing ’09, Priscilla Wilson ’09, Dana Edwards ’09, Sam Ryu ’08, Allegra Roth ’10, Cheryl Powers, Cascade Zak ’09. Photo by Mary Fish Arango.

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points of view

Nature, its independent and codependent laws of evolution on planet earth, is history. Wilderness, unchanged by man, is a romantic myth. Fini. End of story. This moment of history as epic as any is ours to contemplate and perhaps to learn from.

The atmosphere combined with the sun, altered by mankind, is the life-giving blanket around all things. A thin veneer between ground and cosmos. It contains anthropogenic amounts of CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, CFCs and other warming gases far exceeding naturally-occurring variability. Every truthful scientist has been able to quantify and qualify how emissions weave a thicker atmospheric blanket trapping more heat. Humanity is writing this episode of climate change. The changes in the Arctic and Antarctica foreshadow what is coming for the rest of the world. We, you and I, are now in control of this magnifi cent piece of nature, namely the climate.

John Muir, a favored hero of naturalists, praised the atmosphere as the one place where man would not be able to tread. Ever the idealist, hedied shortly after loosing the battle to block Hetch-Hetchy dam in Yosemite. As the founder of the Sierra Club, he disliked the effect of humanity on nature, and revered the untouchable atmosphere. Yosemite, which he helped to set aside, is changing as a result of CO2 and other emissions, and so is everywhere else. Everything is connected.

Humanity did not have a malevolent intent to alter nature. Cheap oil and coal have given rise to a variety of human benefi ts including electricity, travel, computing, and diverse kinds of

foods. To continue with an approximation of these benefi ts and avoid planetary catastrophe, mankind must decarbonize the energy feedstock. Excavating and burning ancient fossil life forms and incinerating rain forests must cease quickly before we pass the tipping point and fall into massive instability and irreversible positive feedback loops. Humanity needs to use renewable energy sources derived from hydrogen, bio-mass, wind and sun. It is everyone’s calling to create a new energy industry, free of emissions, and reduce our current carbon footprint.

Even with intense global warming, we will cope. Soon, we will engineer organisms from scratch and genetically improve all living things as we do now with basic seeds such as corn and wheat. Who knows? A basic genetic transmutation and, bam, we are drought tolerant! We will continue to alter the basic constructs of life to cope with our changing environment.

Is this the natural evolution of our species? To cope? Will each generation be the best and the brightest and co-evolve with its surroundings? Consider this moment in history—look to the sky, the ocean, a mountain, a forest, a wave. In just a few generations, we have learned to alter and manage the rules of nature. This knowledge will not be lost. The door to nature unfettered by man is closed. And here we stand now with other doors to choose.

THE DOOR JUST CLOSEDby Lane W. Sharman Jr. ’71

Berolzheimer Classroom Bulding. Photo by Don Orth.


As privileged Americans living in the wealthiest nation this earth has seen, how can we seriously gauge our green intentions by the paper bags we choose not to waste or the fuel we choose not to buy? Yes, there were teachers at Cate who preached environmental stewardship, and there were clearly teachers who loved and lived in the environment. I am quite sure that David Harbison drove the surfi ng van because he enjoyed looking out over the sea at 4:30 each day; and I’m likewise sure that the views from faculty homes and the trees surrounding them were more an enticement to teach at Cate than any other perk. By its very location, Cate attracted men and women who loved the environment. Those men and women created curriculum that celebrated the environment in such classes as those taught by Rob and Ned Bowler ’83, Paul Denison ’79 and Peter Durnan, and just about every other class that encouraged Cate students to refl ect on the natural world around them. Furthermore, curriculum outside the classroom developed to provide an increasingly engaged experience with the natural world, such as the work that has gone into Outings Week and the increase in opportunities to enjoy outdoor adventures by climbing, kayaking, hiking and mountain biking with passionate teachers. As a student at Cate, I was delighted to fi nd that funds were available to purchase rock climbing equipment. The Cate life, dating back to the school’s fi rst horse-pack rides to Thacher and stretching to today’s numerous hours that each kid spends on green grass surrounded by eucalyptus, inspires affection for the natural environment. And in my thirty year relationship with the school I have been immensely inspired by the work that faculty have done to exploit the resources of the school to teach environmental stewardship.

But we have to concede that the dire state of our planet is a result of global social, cultural, economic and political realities that we all participate in, but which few of us really want to consider. The very state of our existence as consumptive beings at the top of the food chain means that we add to environmental distress every day. Not to say that the world would be a better place with humans. But a lot of humans means a lot of environmental damage, and a culture that celebrates “bigger is better” profoundly compounds the problem.

If we want to seriously address global environmental issues, we cannot ignore the reality that the culture we create, the ideals to which we aspire, the indifference we have for those who are somehow “other”, and the politics which we support in the interest of “nation” exacerbate the problem. If we are serious about the state of the global environment, we need to get serious about expanding the boundaries of our consciousness (social,

political, economic, etc.) to encompass humans living around the globe. An appreciation for the other rather than an aversion to it is a start. We think nothing of subsidizing cotton farmers in the US though doing so creates cycles of poverty in Pakistan. Issues of extraordinary environmental abuse in China, India and throughout the developing world are our issues too. The extraordinary pollutants going into the land, water and air, to support Western consumption, present us with threats that needs to be addressed at both the supply and demand ends of the spectrum.

While I am grateful for the passion that Cate’s teachers brought to their environmental classes and outings, I wonder if more work couldn’t have gone into expanding the boundaries of kids’ thinking beyond their enclosures. I have to give credit to those who created the Human Development curriculum, and there were indeed a great number of teachers who did seek to stretch our senses of self, and our senses of entitlement. During the build-up to the Iraq war, I visited Cate and asked some faculty if they were talking about the war. I got a bunch of blank stares. Shouldn’t a collective action and a collective culture that represents us and that goes to war on our behalf be a subject of discussion… if Cate’s teachers are going to truly prepare their students to ameliorate environmental suffering, shouldn’t they be actively exploring connections of commerce, politics, culture, religion and economy?

The phenomenal glow of the school’s setting and the lifestyle of an open southern California campus inspires love of the natural world. Cate can further distinguish itself by creating curriculum that explores how we as individuals impact the natural environment through our beliefs, our culture, and our decisions - both collective and personal. I’m sure that there are teachers who do this in their way, and Frank Light and Cheryl Powers and a few others did communicate such things when I was a student, but never under the auspice of a stated overarching vision for what Cate kids should grow to be. As a school gift, my graduating class planted a tree that still grows near the pool. My class considered as a slogan, “he who dies with the most toys wins”. I don’t think that we got the message that our culture of consumption yields global damage beyond environmental issues. Cate’s teachers are incredible. But consideration of environmental stewardship is a look at an easily tangible and somewhat innocuous discipline. To make any impact on the global natural environment, our best teachers are going to have to embark on a bolder, broader and more visionary curriculum.

ON BEING GREENChris Yager ’85

19S P R I N G 2 0 0 8

THE GREENING OF CATEby Sandi Pierce

High House dormitory. Photo by Don Orth.


Green…sustainable…renewable…environmentally friendly. Such words now stand shoulder to shoulder with "costs and benefi ts" as major considerations in design, construction, politics, economics, agriculture, manufacturing, and education. Amid growing demand on limited natural resources, we all understand the need to make choices that will secure those resources for future generations, and it was in that context that Cate planned the construction projects now underway on the Mesa. As much as we thought about the particular needs these projects would fi ll, we also considered how we could best model environmental stewardship.

n the Centennial long-range planning process, the School brought into the discussion a

number of environmental contractors and architects. With their input, as well as guidance from the US Green Building Council and the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, we have designed buildings that maintain Cate’s architectural vernacular while utilizing environmentally responsible building concepts. Utilization of the LEED rating system, the benchmark for design and operation of effi cient green buildings, requires the owner to look at water, energy, materials, indoor environmental quality, and site development with an eye toward utilizing sustainable practices and products in all of these areas. Our overriding philosophy has been to create buildings that meet our needs and that utilize to the greatest extent possible the technologies that will support those needs. We were careful not to include a technology simply because it was available, but rather to make sure that it made functional and fi nancial sense as well.

The various elements of the current project—new homes, early learning center (ELC), barn renovation, admission offi ce, pool facility, wastewater treatment, fi eld realignment, and parking—will all fall under the LEED green building guidelines. The Early Learning Center and admission buildings model the LEED for New Construction program, and the fi ve new homes won acceptance into the LEED for Homes Pilot Program. These programs recognize varying levels of achievement – bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. Based on our current design, we are able to achieve the gold level certifi cation for the homes. The ELC and admission building certifi cation levels are still in process.

During our project development process, we reviewed construction materials as well as landscape features, and from a material standpoint we looked at both the outside and the inside of the buildings. One result is that Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) lumber is being utilized for framing and cabinetry; FSC certifi ed lumber comes from foresting operations that reduce

erosion, support habitat, and maintain local jobs and industry. In addition to using sustainable harvested lumber, the framing methodology is designed to minimize waste during construction. Any waste that does occur will be chipped for landscape. Interiors will feature renewable fl ooring in the form of bamboo wood, recycled glass tiles, and carpeting; Fiberock Aqua Tough (paperless, 95% recycled material that resists moisture and mold) in lieu of traditional drywall; no or low VOC paints and stains; tankless, energy-effi cient water heaters; LED lighting (no incandescent lighting); and Energy Start® appliances and windows. Cabinet components, building insulation and all plywood sheathing will be formaldehyde-free, greatly improving indoor air quality, and on the outside, all roofi ng materials will be recycled and recyclable. Building orientation and photovoltaic systems will effect solar gain to the extent possible.

When looking beyond the buildings themselves, we have tried to be environmentally sensitive as well.

Watercolor of new faculty housing by Larry Clark.

I

21S P R I N G 2 0 0 8

GREEN features of new faculty housing

LandscapeDrought tolerant and native landscape, bioswales to manage runoff, high effi ciency irrigation systems

GeneralUse of excavated rocks for rock walls in landscape (nothing trucked off site), mulching and composting of on-site material for landscaping

HousesFraming methodologies used to minimize waste, FSC lumber, Fiberock in lieu of traditional drywall, formaldehyde-free cabinet components and plywood sheathing, green insulation, tankless water heaters, LED lighting, no VOC paints, recycled glass tiles and recycled/recyclable carpeting, bamboo wood fl ooring, PV (solar) systems, Energy Star® appliances

Landscaping will utilize drought tolerant, native plants, and bioswales will control our runoff. In addition, much of the parking area will be of permeable surfaces that will further reduce runoff. Any waste generated during construction will be chipped and mulched, and any native material will be composted and used in landscaping. All boulders will be reused in the rock walls already in our design. A new wastewater treatment plant will treat water to the tertiary level, which means that we can reclaim 100% of our wastewater and safely use it to irrigate our fi elds and landscaping. The benefi ts of the new plant will include: a vast reduction in Cate’s use of public water resources (and approximately $70,000, or 50%, in savings in the School’s water costs); new fi eld space

for baseball and softball (as the current overfl ow effl uent storage pond will be replaced by an underground storage tank); and environmentally benefi cial effects not only for our campus but for the areas that catch our Mesa’s runoff, most importantly the ocean. This will maximize water conservation and result in our attaining the best possible compliance record in meeting wastewater discharge requirements.

Finally, the moving of the Barns from their current location to the area just north of the track will include a historic restoration of the front exterior, creating an ongoing look at Cate history for future generations.

The new facilities will include much needed faculty housing, greatly improved

admission and employee ELC facilities, and a new pool to thoroughly serve our water polo and swimming programs. Throughout this long but very gratifying process, we have worked hard to balance the myriad considerations of education, costs, benefi ts, function, and the environment, and we believe the results not only minimize Cate’s footprint, but also serve as models for our students to carry with them as they consider their own footprint in the future.


GOT A PLAN?Green planning with

Gillian Friedrichs Ockner ’92

([email protected])

When an organization decides to go green, it’s not as simple as

pulling out the magic wand and waving it around. Even for an

individual, or a family, or a school to act “greener,” it helps to

understand the “whys” and “hows” of what is involved. When,

for example, a city government wants to encourage recycling, or

improve infrastructure with sustainable design, a simple mandate

won’t make it happen. There are real obstacles and skepticism to

overcome before change can be effective. Gillian Friedrichs Ockner

’92 helps businesses and city departments (recently in Portland,

Oregon) plan and implement change. “My work is about making a

good plan in a language that everyone understands,” says Gillian.

Below is a simplifi ed version of the process.

1. Identify the practice that you want people to adopt or the

change you want to implement.

If you don’t know exactly what you hope for, then no one else

will either.

2. Make sure the desired outcome is measurable.

If you want people to use low-fl ow showerheads to save water,

make sure the water savings is measurable before and after.

3. Identify barriers to implementation in terms of “real” and

“perceived.”

PERCEIVED: People may think the plan of converting parking

spaces to green areas will be untidy looking.

REAL: Make sure there is enough space and budget

to implement this plan with measurable reduction in

stormwater runoff.

4. Identify early adopters of the plan.

It is ineffi cient to “force” a plan on people who don’t want

it. It is better to fi nd people willing to try it and promote it.

Ask these early adopters to be visible proponents in their

community. Do a pilot program. Monitor and document this

pilot study. Modify design based on pilot results as needed.

5. Communicate clear, simple messages to new people

in their “value terms.”

Find out what people care about and present your idea as

relevant to these values in their language.

It’s one thing to tell your family or friends to recycle, or to start

xeroscaping, or to bring a canvas bag to the store; large-scale

community projects require buy-in from everyone. It takes people

like Gillian and a good plan to make that happen.Photo by Cheryl Powers.

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A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTIONCATE’S Nature Trailby Cheryl Powers, Cate Faculty

Photos of nature trail and students by Cheryl Powers.


Students Eric Carmichael ’07, Rachael Edwards ’07, and Phoom Chirathivat ’07.

25S P R I N G 2 0 0 8

The hills surrounding the Mesa are a blend of deep, saturated greens and rocky tans, and when

you step outside you not only see every detail but you can feel it. The sun beats down on your face and warms your entire body. Some students are studying on blankets in the grass; there’s a Spanish class conjugating verbs in a circle out on Senior Lawn, and everyone else seems to sneak outside at each free moment to be part of it all. If you had a little more time than the passing period between classes, you might venture down to the west side of the Mesa, where the brain-child of eight AP Environmental Biology students was recently born: the Cate Nature Trail.

Walking west from Long House past a few faculty homes, and veering right along the old fi re road to the start of the chipped path, you see the fi rst sign. Meandering further along, you’re greeted by small, engraved plates describing the fl ora found in these parts, like the well-known prickly pear cactus (don’t pick the fruit!) and the lemonadeberry bush. And if you need a rest, four stone benches are artfully scattered along the path to grant you views of the hills and the ocean, or simply a place to sit and think, or write, or study for the next environmental science test. Out there along the trail, you become immersed in the environment, and your dorm and the

classrooms seem hundreds of miles away.This space, this “interpretive trail,” provides the bridge between our daily lives and the natural world. Here we are no longer bumbling tourists but inhabitants of an ecosystem that we walk through often but do not see. Cate students designed the nature walk to enhance the environmental literacy of all learners, but the journey, once begun, takes on almost spiritual dimensions. While students who create and maintain the trail have opportunities to research, write, illustrate, organize and work together to generate a lasting outdoor classroom, they are also afforded the time and space to sink their roots deep into the rich and colorful earth of the Mesa.

AN IDEA IS BORN

Last year’s seniors Rachael Edwards, Phoom Chirathivat, Sam Seidman, Austin Ditz, Namku

Kim, and Eric Carmichael developed the original idea for a nature trail, and they completed all of the preliminary work. They cleared the main path, cut an upper loop trail, helped with the installation of two sets of stone steps, and—with the help of librarian JoAnne Wilson, Nancy Harbison and others—researched the hydrology, geology, fl ora and fauna of the region. The School’s grounds crew, assisted by several students, installed a series of fl agstone benches at different points along the trail, and added a wooden sign at the entrance to the trail just below

It’s one of those bright winter days when the air is so clear you can almost reach out and touch the islands across the channel, thirty miles away, and the eucalyptus trees lining the Robert Day ’37 Walkway stand in perfect contrast to the blue sky.

T

Sketches of Nature Trail by Trevor Wallace '09

Last year’s seniors from l-r: Eric Carmichael, Austin Ditz, Rachael Edwards, Phoom Chirathivat, Namku Kim, Sam Seidman.


the north end of Mesa House. Students then collected sample plants and fl owers, pressing them to make herbarium mounts; they also cataloged plants and birds, and documented the trail itself, as well as the local watershed, with digital photography. Most recently a motion-sensitive wildlife-viewing camera has been installed to catch glimpses of the elusive animals that frequent this area. Funding for the benches and the color-coded signs that identify many native and non-native plants came from the prize money received by the School for winning the Santa Barbara County Water Awareness Contest for the past several years.

The installation of the motion-sensitive camera brought to a conclusion the fi rst phase of the trail project. Future plans include the addition of maps of the local watershed, viewing and discussion stations along the trail, and displays that incorporate more information about the fl ora and fauna adapted to this ecosystem. To ensure interactivity along the trail, displays will emphasize phenomena that people would not normally notice—signs of new life, decay, and renewal—and they will call attention to the ways in which vegetation changes over time on the chaparral. Another exciting goal is to provide an infrared webcam on the trail with a live video feed into the science building for wildlife viewing. The Nature Trail will also will focus on environmental stewardship and the impact of human interactions with the landscape. It will provide educational strands that focus on the hydrology and geology of the region; on native, non-native, and invasive plants; on local animals (birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians); and on the ecology of the region—the interaction of the biotic and abiotic components of this ecosystem. Lesson guides posted on Cate’s website will make it easy for teachers from Cate and other local schools to adapt this information to their science education goals.

A TRAIL TO THE FUTURE

hrough creativity, research, and hard work, the inspiration of a few students has become a reality for all

on the Mesa to enjoy. There is now, just a few minutes walk from the hustle of school life, a haven for refl ection, understanding, and connection to our natural world. This interpretive trail is envisioned as an outdoor-classroom providing learners with a place to interact with natural and man-made elements of the coastal chaparral region. By illustrating the entirety of the ecosystem, the project will allow visitors to understand the relationships between coastal marine and coastal chaparral ecosystems. Informal learning opportunities such as this are essential if students are to develop an appreciation of the diversity, interconnection, and beauty of this remarkable environment. Through interpretative displays, a spotting scope station, viewing and discussion locations, students will understand adaptations that plants and animals have evolved to survive in this particular environment.

One hopes that through the initial investment by students and the continued work on this trail, residents of the Mesa will deepen their appreciation of the environment and recognize the value of conservation. It is a small leap to make that a better understanding of our environment leads to a love for it, and a desire to keep it alive for generations to come.

*footnote: We hope to have all phases of this project

complete before 2010—Cate’s centennial year. You

will be able to keep up with the progress of our trail

on the Cate School website soon.

27

OILOn the afternoon of January 29, 1969, a Union Oil platform six

miles off the coast at Summerland blew out a pipe and ultimately

released 200,000 gallons of crude oil onto beaches from Rincon

Point to Goleta. That was the world’s fi rst major oil spill, and

though trivial in scale compared to later spills around the globe,

it launched the modern environmental movement.

Oil rigs on the Pacifi c. View from the Mesa. Photo by Casey Griffi n ‘09.


ON MY BRAIN

ome of us old-timers also remem-ber that four days earlier, the

Santa Barbara area suffered one of its worst fl oods in memory. Many homes were lost, many people died, and the Cate Mesa was completely isolated for several days, the bridge at the foot of the Mesa washed out and destroyed. For a great many people, and sea life, they were the worst of times, but for a Cate freshman like me, they were the best of times. Classes were cancelled for lack of power, and we students happily

slithered down the muddy mesa to gape at the power of the awesome brown fl ood rumbling with boulders, choked yet strangely fragrant with uprooted lemon trees. A few days later, we joined thousands from the Santa Barbara com-munity on the beaches to help clean up the spilled oil. That is how I got two of my most important lessons ever: 1) that oil may be natural, but it isn’t always good, and 2) that taking a few hours’ hiatus from the constant rehashing of personal dramas—what some people

call “life”—can be refreshing, especially when spent working outdoors alongside neighbors and strangers in service to a cause greater than one’s self. Service is fun; who knew?

Now, 39 years later, seems like a good time to refl ect on those two lessons. Ser-vice in one form or another is still the truly funnest and most refreshing way I’ve found to spend a few hours or years, and our cultural ambivalence about oil is—fi nally—coming to the fore.

by Bruce King ’72

“We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources . . .But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone,when the coal, the iron, the oil and the gas are exhausted.”

— President Theodore Roosevelt, May 13, 1908

“If they can get you to ask the wrong questions,then they don’t have to worry about the answers.”

— Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

S

29S P R I N G 2 0 0 8

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

- John F. Kennedy

You and I, we of the Industrial Revolution, are made of oil. We grow and transport our food with oil, we make clothing with oil, we move ourselves and our things around the landscape with oil, and we certainly build, cool and heat our buildings with oil. We eat, wear, drive and live in oil; we are steeped in the mythology and ethics of oil. Notwithstanding this generic use of the word “oil” to connote the family of fossil hydrocarbons—petroleum, natural gas, and coal—that we began mining and using in earnest 250 years ago, these assertions are, to a stunning extent, literally true. You are probably wearing clothing containing petrochemicals, recently ate food grown with natural gas fertilizers, will soon use a gas-powered vehicle, and will sleep tonight in a climate controlled with fossil fuel en-ergy. Perhaps you read these words by elec-tric light, about half of which comes from a coal-fi red power plant. All of this might be fi ne but for a few problems only recently coming to light: the many and huge toxic

hazards to people and environment that are an oil-based economy and its by-products, the abrupt and unpredictable changes to global climate caused by the recent increase of carbon and other substances in the air, and, last but certainly not least, the fact that supply is limited: we’ve already used up half the oil we ever had. The easy and cheap stuff is gone and burned up, and we now fi ght wars, drill in deep Arctic waters, and scratch at the tarry sands of Alberta to keep the tank full. You and I are part of a spectacularly anomalous period of history, and though we think of it as “normal” and fi ght—literally—to preserve it, this anomaly like all others will soon end. We may already be passing the point in time now called “peak oil,” the point at which global supplies begin to inexorably fall while demand continues to grow. The oil is running out; there was only so much to start with, so the question of the party ending is not “If ” but merely “How soon, and how hard?” As the oil gets more and more expensive, we will have to reinvent—or remember—how to get by without all the cheap, intense, polluting energy.

This will take a great deal more than recycling our newspapers and switching light bulbs, much more than buying a few hybrid cars and biodiesel trucks. Our entire

OIL SPILL IN KOREA by Josh Han ’09

A couple of weeks before our last

Winter Break started, an environmental

tragedy occurred in my home country

of Korea. A crane barge punctured the

oil tank of a ship, which leaked almost

11 million kilograms of crude oil into

the ocean and onto nearby beaches.

Thousands of people who depended on

the ocean to make a living lost their

jobs; all the marine culture in that area

suffered.

When I went back home for the

holidays, I heard about many people

volunteering to clean up the oil. One

weekend, I went with my dad and his

colleagues to the oil-spill site to help

clean the oil remainders on shore.

When we arrived early in the morning,

there were already thousands of

people working. It had been more than

three weeks since the spill and the

smell of oil was still thick in the air.

My job was to scrub the rocks with an

oil-absorbing sponge, and then to sort

donated clothes for volunteers. It was

hard work, and although the smell of

the oil made me dizzy, I felt like I was

playing a part in making the world a

better place. At the end of the day, I

left the site exhausted but with a sense

of accomplishment. I volunteered

two more days during Winter Break

in an effort to help with the ongoing

clean-up.

It is now impossible to grab a handful

of sand on the beach without feeling

the crude oil, and some scientists say

that effects of the spill will last for 20

years. Still, there is hope; people came

together and worked toward a common

goal. Over 580,000 people have helped

clean up the spill in an effort to make

Korea a better place.

30

oil-based industrial economy has been ap-propriately dubbed the “autistic economy” because, like an autistic human, it lives in a state of imperfect, choked communication with the world around itself—the world upon whom it depends. The unimaginably complex system of life within which we live on Earth makes little or no appearance in corporate ledgers or government policies, to date dismissed as either “resources,” there for the taking, or someplace to throw things away. But guess what? If the bees die off, the fruit trees don’t fruit. If the cod are fi shed to extinction, there ain’t no more cod. If the soil was washed away or polluted, you can’t grow food in the ground. After the dry cleaner dumps chemicals “out in back,” you can’t safely drink from the stream. These sorts of things weren’t too clear until recently, but now there are well over six billion of us using the resources and throwing things away. And it turns out there is no “away;” we’re all just here in this fragile, seven-mile-thick biosphere around our big rock called Earth. If you keep dumping trash in the corner of the bedroom, sooner or later you’ve got a stink. Sooner or later you’ve got to pay the piper.I would like to be wrong about all this. I would love for history to prove me, and the many millions speaking of such matters around the world, to have been a bunch of

ill-informed cranks. And, if you read the news, it can look that way. ExxonMobil just reported record profi ts, SUV sales are up both nationally and globally, and presiden-tial candidates rarely if ever even mention such subjects. Yo, what’s the problem? Most of us would like to think, as Vice President Cheney famously remarked, that “The American way of life is not negotiable,” and as former VP Dan Quayle also famously remarked, “The future will be better tomorrow.”

Unfortunately, as my four-year-old daughter discovered, intransigence doesn’t change things much. It doesn’t bring the cod back, it doesn’t revive the soil, and it certainly doesn’t stabilize the ominous changes to our climate. In the preceding quote, John Kennedy warned against the anesthetizing effect of belief in myths, and our white-knuckle grip on the affl uent, oil-based lifestyle of our times has turned us into a race of autistics among the commu-nity of species. We think we are building a better, bigger house, when we are only sawing at the branch on which we sit.

How do we fi x this? How do we move from an autistic economy to a vibrant, sustain-able one? In what way can any or all of us be effective in bringing about change, or

helping smooth the transition as things go ahead and change whether we like it or not? As the saying goes, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” My own wandering path from Cate has led to all sorts of adventure working with vari-ous aspects of ecological building, always with an extraordinary cast of characters from all over the world. Yet it has all felt pretty much like that cool, sunny day on the beach 39 years ago, having a great time helping out with the cleanup, even while weeping for the oil-soaked birds struggling to breathe. Servons, indeed. Who needs fi ction, when we are living in the most amazing time in human history?

Bruce King ’72 is the Director of the non-profi t Ecological Building Network (www.ecobuildnetwork.org) and the author of several books (www.greenbuildingpress.com).

31S P R I N G 2 0 0 8

There is no simple solution to our petroleum dependence. The answer is not conservation or increases in fuel economy standards, nor is it hybrids, plug-in hybrids or battery electric cars. It is not hydrogen or fuel cells, and it certainly isn’t natural gas, biogas, biodiesel or ethanol either. The bottom line is that there is no silver bullet that will save us from our petroleum dependence and deliver us from the public heath effects, environmental harms and economic vulnerability caused by our dependence on oil. What is the answer then?

All of the above. Silver buckshot.

The massive scale and urgency of the challenge demands a solution that is diverse and inclusive. No single alternative fuel or advanced vehicle technology will solve the energy equation alone. Instead we need to employ a suite of vehicle technologies, alternative fuels and conservation policies that together hold the promise of reducing oil dependence, slowing global warming and cleaning up our air and water.

Take ethanol for example. While a promising renewable fuel that can directly replace gasoline in internal combustion engines with only minor modifi cations, ethanol has limitations, among them an inferior fuel economy, possible increases in smog-forming and carbon emissions and competition with food crops for feedstock and arable land.

Likewise, biodiesel is a renewable fuel that replaces diesel fuel and dramatically lowers greenhouse gas emissions, but has liabilities in the form of increased air pollution and competition for land with food crops.

Hydrogen fuel can be derived from natural gas or from water using myriad energy sources ranging from renewable power (clean) to coal (dirty) to nuclear (political). The same hydrogen used in a fuel cell is twice as effi cient as an internal combustion engine and has zero tailpipe emissions. However, the technology is expensive and requires new fueling infrastructure.

Natural gas used in an internal combustion engine is the cleanest option on the road today in terms of criteria pollutants. But it’s still a fossil fuel that needs to be extracted and imported.

Hybrids increase vehicle effi ciency by capturing otherwise wasted energy from braking and return it to the car in the form of electrical power to support a conventional gasoline engine. Plug-in hybrids perform the same function, however, they have a bigger battery and an all-electric range that can result in overall fuel economy of 100 mpg. While these technologies dramatically increase fuel effi ciency, they still rely on burning conventional fossil fuels, and even if every car magically became a hybrid tomorrow, increases in the number of new vehicles and miles traveled would erase these effi ciency gains in a matter of years.

While pure battery electric vehicles have zero emissions and are extremely effi cient, battery technology still remains just out of reach for automakers to deliver a vehicle that is safe, affordable and with a driving range and refueling time that would be acceptable to the average consumer.

Mass-transit is a key solution to achieving signifi cant petroleum reductions. However, while some commuters’ travel needs can be met through existing local mass-transit or commuter rail, cars and trucks will continue to remain important for individuals and for commerce.

Clearly we have a lot of options. The best way to achieve the goal of reducing petroleum dependence and its attendant problems is to deploy these fuels and technologies in tandem and in a way that maximizes their benefi ts, exploits their synergies and minimizes their liabilities. For example, a plug-in fuel cell hybrid fueled by hydrogen made from rooftop solar power could be a good choice in California or Florida. A plug-in hybrid burning ethanol made from organic waste could make great sense in Iowa or Idaho. Battery power might be the right choice for a taxi in Manhattan and a biodiesel big rig could be a good choice for long haul truckers.

Silver Buckshotby Daniel Emmett ’87(reprinted with permission from WaterKeeper Magazine)


We will need to have performance and sustainability standards for all fuels to ensure we achieve environmental benefi ts from a transition to alternative fuels and don’t wind up backsliding on air quality or have unintended adverse impacts on water quality, biodiversity or global warming.

The solution is really all about choice and diversity. Americans love choice. Just think about the cereal shelf in a grocery store. Why shouldn’t we have real options when it comes to transportation fuels? And imagine if your fi nancial advisor recommended you put all of your net worth in pork belly futures. You’d laugh, then say, “You’re fi red!” There is strength and security in diversity whether you’re talking about your investment portfolio or the future of transportation fuels.

The fueling station at the Regional Transportation Center in San Diego embodies this vision of diversity and choice. Here customers can choose from ethanol, biodiesel, natural gas, liquid propane gas, electricity, as well as conventional fuels. This vision of clean fuel choice is real and attainable. We have choices that will work for us today and others on the way. We need to demand that the energy companies, auto companies and our leaders continue to invest in making them available to consumers.

Taken together, better conservation strategies, advanced vehicle technologies, and a range of domestically-sourced fuels produced from renewable sources will drastically

reduce our dependence on oil, address global warming and air pollution, insulate our economy from oil-based market spikes, create and expand business opportunities for farmers and industries, and protect public health. These solutions can provide relief from the damages resulting from dependence on petroleum. However, none of these solutions is a silver bullet; we need silver buckshot.

Daniel Emmett ’87 is Executive Director of the non-profi t organization, Energy Independence Now, and a Managing Director of the cleantech consulting fi rm, Innovo Energy Solutions Group, LLC.

Image courtesy of Bruce King ’85 and SolarCraft.

33S P R I N G 2 0 0 8

CAPE IVY IN TORO CANYONby Joe Schinsky, Cate Faculty

This year the Environmental Science classes at Cate School

have been collaborating with researchers at UCSB on a

restoration project along Toro Canyon creek. The goal of the

project is to eradicate an exotic, invasive ground cover plant:

Cape Ivy (Delairea odorata). The ivy, which is indigenous to the

southwestern coast of South Africa, is believed to have been

introduced into Southern California some 20-30 years ago. The

ivy is a signifi cant ecological problem, particularly in coastal

riparian and chaparral ecosystems; it forms dense, Kudzu-like

mats over existing vegetation, thus over-competing the native

species for sunlight and other resources. Because Cape Ivy has

such a signifi cant competitive advantage over native plants, the

overall biodiversity and relative abundance of native species

are affected. In areas such as the Toro Canyon site, the ivy is so

dominant that it has disrupted the local food chains by reducing

the abundance of indigenous food sources for birds, insects,

and small mammals.

Together, Cate students and ecologists at UCSB and with the

Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens are studying the ecology of the

Cape Ivy and the areas in which it is becoming an increasingly

signifi cant problem. Students have been involved in projects

which include manual removal of the ivy, chemical and physical

analysis of soil samples from the site, analysis of seeds stored

in those soil samples, monitoring the plant diversity and

growth of Cape Ivy and other species in various experimental

transects, and amassing an inventory of invertebrates found

in the study site and comparing this to the same from non-

infested, neighboring areas. The information that results from

this work will be very important for evaluating the effi cacy

of several strategies for eradication of the Cape Ivy. One of

these strategies, which seems to hold the most potential for a

long(er) term solution to the problem, involves the introduction

of biological control agents: an herbivorous insect that feeds

exclusively on this species of ivy. The proposal to introduce this

insect is currently undergoing all appropriate scrutiny to ensure

that no negative, or unexpected, environmental consequences

will result.

Environmental Science students conduct work at the sites

during double-block class periods, or in the classroom during

regular blocks. Collaboration in this project is enormously

valuable for them; not only are they directly involved in

graduate-level research, but they are applying science to a local

and regional problem.

The Prickly Pear Cactus. Photo by Don Orth.


In the H

om

e

Your home may be the bestplace to begin to educateyour family about makingsustainable choices. Athome, the biggest impactwe have on the environ-ment is through our use ofenergy and water.

ElectricityBuy green power ii

Investigate carbon offsets

Heating and CoolingCaulk and weather strip leaky windows, baseboards, and doors

Insulate attic and basement

Clean refrigerator condenser coils twice a year

Change furnace and heat pump filters monthly

Use a programmable thermostat to lower energy use when you’re not at home

WaterInstall low-flow fixtures and sink aerators

Install low-flow or dual-flush toiletsiii

Adjust outside garden sprinklers to minimize runoff and waste

StepStepStep It It It Up Up Up

ElectricityInstall solar water heaters, photo voltaic panels, and geothermal heat pumps

Replace old appliances with energy-efficient appliances—look for the Energy Star label

Heating and CoolingWhen buying a home or remodeling,consider green architecture

Install energy-efficient windows and doors

Landscape for summer shading and natural winter heatingiv

WaterExplore possibilities for gray water v

use and rainwater capture

Landscape for water efficiency

GoGoGo for for for Green Green Green

Think GreenAdopt an energy-efficient mindset; the cleanest energy is the energy you don’t use

For economic incentives for many energy-efficient devices, see www.energystar.gov/index. cfm?c=products.pr_tax_credits#1

Recycle everything you can, including old electronics

Use as many recycled products aspossible

For recycling in your area, see www.earth911.org

CHALLENGECHALLENGECHALLENGEGet an energy audit, set water andenergy reduction goals, and work tomeet them.

Visit sustainablechoices.stanford.edu to learn howmany of these choices can also save you money.

DigDigDig Deeper Deeper DeeperGetGetGet Started Started Started

ElectricitySet your computer for five-minute sleep mode

Unplug appliances when not in use orcontrol power with smart power stripi

Change from old-fashioned light bulbs to compact fluorescents

Heating and CoolingOnly heat or cool the rooms you need

Turn down water heater to 120˚F

Set your thermostat as high in summerand low in winter as comfort allows

WaterOnly run washing machine/dishwasher on full loads

Turn off water while brushing teeth, soaping hands, and shaving

Avoid midday watering and mowing

Take shorter showers

Air dry clothes

At the

Store

ProduceShop at stores/restaurants that buy local and organic

Meat and DairyBuy meat/dairy directly from producers, and ask how it was grown

Minimize WasteCarry a reusable coffee mug or water bottle

Buy foods that minimize processing and packaging

StepStepStep It It It Up Up Up

ProduceEat seasonal produce

Buy local/direct at farmers’ markets

Grow your own food

Meat and DairyTo reduce meat consumption, set a goal (e.g. eat 50 percent less meat)

Minimize WasteCompost your waste

Take reusable bags for all of your shopping—start by using them for groceries

GoGoGo for for for Green Green Green

Find A Local Source Offood www.foodroutes.org/localfood/

meat www.eatwellguide.org

seafood www.seafoodwatch.org

When Buying Food, AskWhere was it produced? think: local economy, carbon emissions from transport, freshness and quality

How was it produced?think: pesticides, antibiotics, wild caught fish, Fair Trade, and monoculture

CHALLENGECHALLENGECHALLENGEEat seasonally within your foodshed.vii

Look here for help: www.sustainabletable.org/shop/eatseasonal/

DigDigDig Deeper Deeper DeeperGetGetGet Started Started Started

ProduceBuy organicvi—look for the USDAOrganic label

Meat and DairyChoose

1) Grass-fed

2) Free-range/cage-free

3) No antibiotics/hormones

SeafoodRefer to the Seafood Watch Card when buying seafood

Minimize WasteBuy products with recyclable packaging

When you’re shopping,your impact on the environ-ment may not be as easyto assess. Use the cardfor guidance before a tripto the store and whileyou’re shopping— whetherit’s the grocery store orthe farmers’ market.


On the

Roa

d

StepStepStep It It It Up Up Up GoGoGo for for for Green Green Green DigDigDig Deeper Deeper DeeperGetGetGet Started Started Started

Drive SmartMaintain proper tire pressure

Change oil and air filter regularly

Don’t speed on the freeway; it wastes gas

Accelerate and brake smoothly

Track your gas mileage

Turn off engine when idling for long periods

At low speeds, open windows; athigher speeds, use air conditioning

Drive LessCarpool

Try a local car share programviii

Drive a fuel-efficient car, such as a hybrid or small car

Consolidate errands and shop close to home

Travel during off-peak hours; being stuck in traffic wastes gas

Get travel directions ahead of time to save gas

Vacation locally or regionally

Leave the Car at HomeBike, walk, or take public transit

Telecommute to work ix

Offset emissions you can’t avoid through a certified carbon offset programx

Consider transit options when buying a home or choosing a job

Take Further ActionTalk with your public officials about transit technologies (light rail, bus, rapid transit)

Talk with your public officials about installing stop lights rather than stop signs at busy intersections

Talk to your employer about commuting incentives

Learn about alternative fuel sources

Choose low-carbon emission recreation options

CHALLENGECHALLENGECHALLENGEwalk 0–2 milesbike 2–10 miles public transit or carpool >10 miles

Choose a carbon offset programthat is right for you. Look here for help:www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/ConsumersGuidetoCarbonOffsets.pdf

We all have busy schedulesand we all need to getaround. But the way wetravel really matters,because our greatestimpact on the environmentmay be when we’re onthe road.


Sustainable choices card and description reprinted with permission from Stanford’s School of Earth Sciences.

Sustainable Choices CardThe small choices we make every day affect the health of the planet we share. The Sustainable Choices Card provides information you can use to make small changes that will have a major, positive impact on our environment. Use it to make decisions at home, at work, and when shopping.

Inspired by the Initiative on the Environment and Sustainability, Stanford’s School of Earth Sciences teamed up with a group of students from its Earth Systems Program to create a tool to help ordinary Americans make sustainable choices in their daily lives. During the academic year of 2006-07, teams of interdisciplinary environmental science students—with faculty guidance—developed categories and guidelines for sustainable choices.

visit http://sustainablechoices.stanford.edu/card/index.html

ToToTo use use use the the the Sustainable Sustainable Sustainable Choices Choices Choices Card: Card: Card: 1. Cut along the outer black line2. Fold on blue dashed lines

35S P R I N G 2 0 0 8

FootnotesFootnotesFootnotes

A smart power strip cuts power tounused appliances.

Green power is any carbon-freeelectricity (e.g. solar, wind).

A dual-flush toilet has a high- andlow-flush setting to save water.

See www.pioneerthinking.com/landscape.html for more info.

Gray water is non-toxic water (such ascooking water) that can be reused.

Organic refers to agriculture that doesnot use pesticides, fertilizers, growthhormones, antibiotics, or artificialadditives. Certified organic means thefood met standards set by one ofmany third-party organic certifyingorganizations. Certification is oftenexpensive and may not be possible forsmall farmers who are using organicpractices. If a product says organic ornatural but does not have a certifica-tion label, ask the producer for specificinformation to verify his/her methods.

A foodshed is a local bioregion thatgrows food for a specific population.It is a conceptual way of looking atand thinking about local, sustainablefood systems.

Car share programs allow membersto use cars as needed, without havingto own one.

Telecommuting means working fromhome via phone and Internet.

Carbon offset programs sell credits forinvestments in renewable energy andcarbon sequestration programs.

For more informationwww.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/carboncalculator/ to calculate your carbon emissions

www.ecofoot.org/ to calculate your footprint on theplanet

ResourcesResourcesResources

HOMEHOMEHOME

Recycling and Hazardous WasteCenters

www.earth911.org/

Economic Incentives

www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_tax_credits#1

EnergyStar Appliance Stores

www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=store.store_locator

Water-Saving Resources

www.h2ouse.net

Cheap/No Cost Ways to SaveEnergy

www.ase.org/content/article/detail/965

Good Tips for Maintaining EnergyEfficiency At Home

www1.eere.energy.gov/consumer/tips/save_energy.html

FOODFOODFOOD

Why Buy Local/Fair Trade/Organic

localhttp://guide.buylocalca.org/

fair tradewww.transfairusa.org/content/about/overview.php

organicwww.nofavt.org/why.php

Most Important Produce to BuyOrganically

www.foodnews.org/index.php

Seasonal Charts

www.sustainabletable.org/

Ways to Buy Local

Farmers’ markets and communitysupported agriculture (CSAs)

www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets/map.htm

www.foodroutes.org/localfood/

www.eatwellguide.org/

Organizations

Community Alliance with FamilyFarmers (CA): www.caff.org

Kellogg Foundation: www.wkkf.org/

Center for Agroecology andSustainable Food Systems:http://casfs.ucsc.edu/

i

ii

iii

iv

v

vi

vii

viii

ix

x

Fair Trade Banana Split Image

www.ideas-forum.org.uk/Images/BSplit.jpg

TRANSPORTATIONTRANSPORTATIONTRANSPORTATION

Fuel Economy/Reducing Emissions

www.fueleconomy.gov/

www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/findacar.htm

www.epa.gov/fueleconomy/

www.epa.gov/greenvehicle/

Gas Mileage Tips

www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/drive.shtml

www.edmunds.com/advice/fueleconomy/articles/106842/article.html

Public Transportation

www.publictransportation.org

Carbon Footprint

www.terrapass.com

www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/carboncalculator/

Car Sharing

www.carsharing.net/where.html

www.flexcar.com/

www.zipcar.com

BehindBehindBehind the the the Card Card Card

The EarthEarthEarth Systems Systems Systems Program Program Program, housed

in the School of Earth Sciences, is

Stanford's interdisciplinary, under-

graduate program in environmental

science, technology, and policy

(the program also offers a coterminal

master ’s degree). Earth Systems

students share a passion to participate

and a desire to help solve some of the

world’s most pressing problems. The

Sustainable Choices Card was created

by Earth Systems students working

with faculty guidance and expertise.

The SchoolSchoolSchool of of of Earth Earth Earth Sciences Sciences Sciences

includes in its mission a commitment

to create and effectively disseminate

fundamental knowledge; to train

students and future leaders, and to

educate the broader public; and

to integrate, synthesize, and apply

scientific and engineering knowledge

to societal problems, including the

sustainable use of energy and water

resources. Earth sciences faculty

work in areas including energy, water,

land use and land use change,

sustainable agriculture, climate systems

and climate change, and oceans

and coastal environments.

The InitiativeInitiativeInitiative on on on the the the Environment Environment Environment

andandand Sustainability Sustainability Sustainability is part of The

Stanford Challenge, a university-wide

fundraising campaign launched in

2006. The initiative is a campus-wide

effort to mobilize expertise from every

corner of the campus to solve the

most critical environmental problems of

our age. Its central goal is to promote

environmental sustainability—helping

societies learn to meet their resource

demands without undermining the

ability of our planet to provide for future

generations.

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Design:AKA–Ahmann Kadlec AssociatesPalo Alto, CaliforniaAKAcreativegroup.com

Printing:Watermark Press (a Consolidated GraphicsCompany) San Francisco, CaliforniaFSC Certified

Paper:Neenah ENVIRONMENT® PC 100 WhiteFSC Certified100% Post Consumer FiberProcessed Chlorine Free Certified (PCF)Made with 100% Green Energy

http://sustainablechoices.stanford.edu

Small choices we makeevery day affect thehealth of the planet weshare. The SustainableChoices Card providesinformation you can useto make small changesthat will have a majorpositive impact on ourenvironment.

How to Use the Card

Each column contains recommen-

dations based on how easy the

changes are to implement, and on the

magnitude of their potential benefits.

Get Started with easy lifestyle

changes, Step It Up when you’re

ready to do more, and Go For

Green to have the greatest impact.

The choices we make every day—

large and small—really matter. Use the

card to make individual choices that

will soften your footprint on the planet.

KEEPKEEPKEEP IT IT IT HANDY! HANDY! HANDY!

Find Out Much MoreVisit the Sustainable ChoicesWeb site to learn more abouthow you can make sustainablechoices.

The Sustainable ChoicesReference Card and Web sitewere created by the EarthSystems Program, School ofEarth Sciences, StanfordUniversity, and produced aspart of the Stanford Initiativeon the Environment andSustainability.

Photo by Mary Fish Arango. Photo by Don Orth. Photo by Mary Fish Arango.


GREEN CLASS NOTESCate alumni are going green. We asked them about how green they are and received a jungle of responses—below are just a few. For more comments and a very green blog on this topic, visit www.catealumni.org/?green.

Harry Russell ’45It doesn’t surprise me that Cate is interested in problems connected to global warming. I’m glad to hear it! We have made a small start here in Arizona by replacing all our incandescent lamp bulbs with fl orescent ones. Our local Episcopal church is in the process of doing the same. I wish more people in Arizona would show more interest in using solar power. With all our sunshine, it would make so much sense!

Charles Gompertz ’54 My wife Leslie and I take the stewardship of our land very seriously. We have about 35 acres here in Nicasio in West Marin County. We grow olives and raise Highland Cattle. Both are very small operations, but the 100+ olive trees thrive on the compost supplied by two horses and the cattle. I am sure they are pumping some O2

back into the atmosphere—if only to counteract the methane from the cattle. We are about 60% off the grid, thanks to solar panels on our barn. We have cut our power use dramatically as a result. Since we pump our water from a spring and a well, this makes a considerable difference.

If we are not stewards of what we live on, then who will play that role? Whether you live in a city apartment, suburban home or ranch, the obligation is the same. It is a matter of responsibility, of being answerable for who and what you are. Most of us Cate folks have a large carbon footprint; we use and control a lot of resources and are richly blessed with this world’s goods. To have much is to be responsible for much. I am sure Curtis Cate would have had something to say about that. It is very much like those who will be

served, learning to serve. When we see the school motto, “Servons”, it raises questions about stewardship, responsibility, and understanding our role as participants in all that is.

Frank Brokaw ’63Although voluntary action is laudable, the macro-issue can only be solved long-term by market mechanisms that impose fi nancial penalties on polluters (who include us all). An incremental tax on imported energy molecules can both reduce molecule consumption and raise funds to subsidize public transit. The theory is to ensure that the full cost of private consumption is borne by the individual consuming that good or service.

Another area largely ignored today, despite continuing crises, is the artifi cial water shortage in California. The Feds via the Army Corps of Engineers spend billions subsidizing the wasteful consumption of water by California agribusiness growing cotton, rice and alfalfa—crops that should be confi ned to the Mississippi Delta, India, South Vietnam, Bangladesh, the Amazon basin and other high-humidity venues, where weather and nature create a comparative advantage for those crops in a true free-market environment. Were California cities able to bid in a free market for all water available in-state, the California water shortage would disappear overnight and

enviro-issues caused by its subsidized agribusiness would “evaporate” concurrently.

Lou Ogaard ’64I administered an environmental restoration program (elimination of abandoned coal mines) for the State of North Dakota for over twenty years. We planted thousands of trees and shrubs in the western part of the State to control erosion and provide upland game habitat. We also created numerous wetlands to control surface water runoff on the reclaimed sites and provide waterfowl habitat. I took early retirement in 2006 and currently live in Bolivia. I do not use water while brushing teeth but not so much for environmental concerns but because it may be contaminated. I do a lot of walking here, although the cost of gas is only $1.65 a gallon, so we have less incentive to go by foot than folks in the US. I’m not sure about global warming as a scientist (PhD in botany), but I think every effort should be made to conserve what we have for the future. Living in a third world country, I see trash thrown out the windows with no pick up effort. None of the cars seem to have catalytic converters so there is plenty of exhaust in the air. I could put my talents in abandoned mine reclamation to work here, but there is little interest. The real plus is that Bolivia has vast, pristine areas that would be an ecotourist s dream.

Leslie Gompertz (Charles Gompertz ’54) walking her horse down to the solar powered barn in Marin County

37S P R I N G 2 0 0 8

environmental notes

Diran Majarian ’66Greece is blessed with mountains, rivers and lakes and a very large number of islands. It has a very sensitive ecosystem. Unfortunately, little is done to preserve nature. About 5 million people live in the greater Athens area, out of a total country population of 11 million. The strongest political lobby and major industry in Greece is the construction sector. We have serious problems with quarries, ground water level from overuse of wells, waste disposal by land fi ll, air pollution, building on estuaries that aggravates fl ash fl ooding and lack of proper zoning laws. We have a national issue about the diversion of a major river in Western Greece to boost the Athens water supply and to support wasteful cultivation of cotton in Thessaly that survives only on EU subsidies. The EU Commission has levied numerous fi nes on Greece for failure to apply environmental directives. Recently a leading Athens newspaper Kathimerini has made environmental issues a major theme.

Trevor Thomas ‘69Environmentalism, as it was fi rst taught me at Cate, was about being a good citizen in the natural world. It was about understanding one’s relation to other things and respecting limits and boundaries. Environmentalism was about humility—about understanding both one’s place in nature and one’s unimportance in the grand scheme of things.

That sense of humility came to be viewed as dangerous by later generations of environmentalists. A belief in one’s insignifi cance allows one to doubt the enduring consequence of irresponsible behavior. Humility of that sort had to be driven out of the human

consciousness. Man had to be re-programmed to believe that we could by our actions alter the very fabric of planetary physics—that bovine effl uvia and petrochemical residues could make the oceans overrun the land. Only then would there be justifi cation suffi cient to warrant the imposition by fi at of the far-reaching limits on human activity demanded by Environmentalism, limits which the normal operation of politics would never sanction.

I come by my deep skepticism of manmade global warming as a result of a childhood spent in the company of my father and his colleagues, Rocky Mountain geologists who fi lled my head with images of endlessly repeating cycles of glaciation and global warming; of times when the cold and desolate plains of Wyoming were the beds of warm tropical seas. I vividly remember seeing a graph that described a time when Earth’s atmosphere was so rich in greenhouse gases that today’s politicized scientists would call it a global catastrophe just waiting to happen. Instead, primitive Arthropods chose that epoch to crawl out of the shallow seas and colonize the landmass—and some 400 million years later, here we all are.

Philip Bowles ’69I’ve spent the past 28 years in production agriculture, trying to grow useful crops in a sustainable, safe, and economically rewarding manner. Having a decent high school background in chemistry, physics, and biology allowed to me to take college level courses and survive without too much trouble (even though I was a Drama major). It never ceases to amaze me how many “environmental activist” types have not acquired even the

rudiments of a scientifi c education. Many of the environmental “debates” now clogging the courts and legislatures could have been avoided, or made useful, had the parties on either side had the benefi t a decent high school science education. Cate, and schools like it, play a vital role in producing creative and nuanced minds.

Marty Troup ’75I think there are really a couple of key levels for discussions on this topic.

1. Local/personal actions and results. These are things like LCD monitors changed from CRT, selective use of compact fl orescent lighting (not great in high cycle areas where they fail fast), better water heaters and appliances, better car choices, drive less etc. These are increasingly “good” things to do. They are morally, logically and even fi nancially appealing and valuable.

2. Large scale policy issues. This is a complete mess. With some estimates showing that China has already usurped the green house gas king title from the US and is opening something like two new coal fi red power plants a week and creating as much as 60% of the green house gas seen over the US, the scale of the problem is staggering.

Personally, I would like to take reasonable and aggressive action, and I have replaced appliances, gotten rid of all but two CRTs in my house, installed fi ve CFLs plus upgrade insulation, and installed dual pane windows, all at considerable cost. But at a certain level, I feel that such actions are a farce unless power generation and other massive areas of green

38

environmental notes

house gas production are brought onto some sane path towards large scale reductions. Many studies show that nearly 2/3 of the green house gas problem in the US is due to power plant production; thus, no other area offers so much opportunity for resolution. So far the US and China, not to mention India and a few other developing nations, have done virtually nothing to address the issue. Even the EU, which has been more active, has achieved almost nothing and not met their own short term goals. (If you correct out for “dirty” Eastern European facilities that were shut down over the last 10 years.)

We can only hope that leadership arrives from somewhere that places a priority on the concept of a well articulated national energy policy rather than aggressively seeking to extend the status quo, which has been the current US policy.

Michael C. Keenan ’76The Green Paradigm has been a big factor in my business plan for the winery that I run. We farm sustainably, putting more into the system than we take out. I provide on-site housing for my key employees, eliminating commute time and traffi c stress. We just switched to biodegradable shipping containers from the old styrofoam, even though the styrofoam was a little more foolproof. And perhaps, most importantly, we installed a photo-voltaic system last year that provides all the power that the entire campus needs, houses and all.

As far as reaching back in time and trying to remember anything from my Cate experience that sparked an interest in things green...My outdoor experiences at Cate certainly had a hand in shaping my ’green’ thinking. The camping trips

with Mr. Bowler and the Ornithology class that I started with Mr. Spittler all helped develop a love for and an appreciation of our natural systems. Great memories.

Rob Dunton ’79 There was a broader environmental movement afoot while I was at Cate in the 70’s. Cate had no formal outdoor program that I remember. I went on only one camping trip to Yosemite and spent one weekend in the Channel Islands during my four years, but these two experiences of pristine nature at a time when Iron Eyes Cody was crying about pollution on TV and litter-prone pull-tab cans were outlawed made a big impact on me as a teenager. My soda cans were changing. Environmental issues were part of the national consciousness, and somewhere down deep, my outdoor experiences at Cate coincided with this larger movement to make an impact and environmental awareness that shapes my actions and perceptions daily. I look forward to championing further composting, solar power, expansion of our use of organic foods and the purchase of hybrid cars at Cate—to continue our path toward becoming a beacon of environmental action, awareness and sustainability. Why not be the fi rst energy-neutral school in America with no carbon footprint? We can do it...if we want.”

Amy Williams Black ’86I am no maven of “green-ness,” but as with all areas of my life, Cate was profoundly infl uential in developing my environmental awareness. The beauty of the natural world surrounds Cate: the mountains, the high eucalyptus trees, the Pacifi c Ocean and its beaches. Years later when I was living in bleak urban landscapes (New York, Berlin, Chicago) I suffered from the lack

of daily exposure to green things and realized how important it was for me to move back California and be near the ocean and mountains and spend a part of each day outdoors. Part of enjoying this part of the world is the obligation to help maintain it, which I do and am teaching my kids to do as well.

Monty Schmitt ’86I have worked since ’91 doing some kind of habitat restoration or environmental water policy work. I am currently beginning my eighth year at the Natural Resources Defense Council as a senior water resources scientist. I am the project manager for an effort to restore salmon and habitat over 150 miles of the San Joaquin River and this summer was a co-author on a report regarding the effects of global warming on water resources.

Allison Pomerantz Schiller ’89‘Going Green’ plays a prominent role in my family’s daily life. I have three small children (6 1/2, 5 and 2) and we ride our bikes everywhere to get around. We recycle, compost, and grow herbs and vegetables in our garden. We used cloth diapers for the kids. This year for all of the kids’ birthdays, we had ’zero-impact parties’: gathering friends in a park or in our backyard, using only our own plates, silverware, etc., (even in the park!) and threw away nothing. The gifts for the children were either hand-made, from thrift

stores or something usable (i.e., a rosemary plant to put in the garden). Cate played a large role in my ’greening’. This was the fi rst time I even considered turning the water off when brushing teeth or showering. The impact of living in such a remarkably beautiful place left me with a heightened sense of the natural world that surrounded me. I will never forget driving to Thacher for soccer games (I played on the JV team) and pulling oranges off the trees to peel and eat. I am applying for a Masters’ in Architecture and look to study sustainable and green building. Thanks to Cate for so many positive infl uences!

Amanda Clark Happle ’91My husband and daughter and I have been living in Boquete, Panama, for the past year. In a matter of weeks, we are set to open the fi rst restaurant to feature organic produce in our area. We have been working with a coalition of organic farmers in the province to provide organic fruits, vegetables, eggs, honey and other items to the community. It is our hope that by showing other farmers how profi table organic farming can be, that we can convince more farmers to abandon their use of chemical pesticides in favor of organic, gentler, and more “earth friendly” methods. Our restaurant will also participate in the community recycling program that provides funds to local schools. Finally, as our own experiment in organic farming, we also grow organic coffee on our fi nca where we live.

5-year-old Elisha Schiller saving energy.

39S P R I N G 2 0 0 8

April Phungrasamee Newman ’94Below is a list of some things I do to ’live green:’

+ use public transportation, walk, or bike to consume less fuel, contribute less to pollution, and decrease traffi c+ fuel my car with local biodiesel instead of petroleum-based diesel when I drive (no conversion on a diesel car is necessary to use biodiesel)

use canvas shopping bags• eat organic, local, and shade • grown (and fair trade)use natural and organic toiletries • and housecleaning productspurchase recycled goods • whenever possible (e.g., paper, t.p., Preserve-brand toothbrushes, clothing made from recycled fi bers)use rags instead of disposable • mop inserts (swiffer-type)recycle and compost• turn off lights, monitors, and • faucets when not in uselove a spouse who works in the • solar energy industry!

Environmental and social sustainability are overlapping more and more. I think of fair trade products and other measures which take care of the environment while concurrently treating people better than old alternatives.

Scott Claassen ’97It would be impossible to separate my current convictions with regard to the environment from my experience at Cate. Although I had expressed my love for the outdoors through beach clean-ups and the like before I came to the Mesa, my knowledge and practical skills changed drastically, thanks to the faculty, staff, and opportunities available at Cate. First of all, the Outdoor Program

allowed me to experience the beauty of the natural world. It is the envy of my hiking, climbing, surfi ng, kayaking, and outdoors friends. Secondly, the faculty had a huge impact. Cheryl Powers is one name that stands out for me. I distinctly remember a project in an honors Chemistry class in which we had to design “green” living space. If I remember correctly, Jim Masker’s International Relations course was nearly paper-free, even back then. It was also at Cate that I learned the fi ner points of recycling through sorting plastic and other materials and carting them off to the recycling facility—a practice I continued at my less-than-green university. A series of convocations and speakers related to environmental awareness also had a major impact. Most importantly, the rhetoric of the community was—and I assume IS—oriented towards awareness.

As for the practical application of my “greenness,” yes—I am very conscious of my water usage. I changed all of the light bulbs in my house to fl uorescents. I recycle and compost. I bicycle whenever possible. I carpool whenever possible. I use reusable bags for my shopping. I practice Leave No Trace principles when outdoors. When I have a home, I will do my best to make it as green as possible.

I am very concerned. I’ve had the opportunity to see fi rsthand the shrinking of glaciers all over the world. The effects on polar ice—particularly in the Arctic over the past year—is staggering. Climate change is certain. Anything that I can do to minimize that change I try to do. Many of the changes we can make in our lives are simple, and the majority of their side effects are benefi cial to our physical and mental health.

Bill Boyd ’00I just got back from an environmental trip. I drove to Panama from Newport Beach, CA. We converted our diesel truck to run on the used vegetable oil from restaurants and collected it from the restaurants along the way. That idea is particularly relevant in Mexico and Central America, because mid-size diesel trucks are everywhere down there, and diesels can be converted easily. We spread the knowledge and information to hundreds of hotel and restaurant owners with fl eets of diesel trucks, as well as telling the average Joe. Everyone was excited to hear what was possible, and every single person we talked to was interested in a conversion. It makes sense, because by burning vegetable oil instead of diesel your car’s emissions drop signifi cantly, and fuel is usually free. Restaurants give away their used vegetable oil, because it is useless to them. We also passed out 100 copies of a children’s book we had translated into Spanish. The book shows how litter ends up in the ocean and all of its negative effects. We brought the books to schools or just rounded up twenty kids in the street and read it with them. We dropped copies off at schools all along the Pacifi c coast. The response we got was amazing. The kids loved it.

Jessie King ’02I am from Hong Kong, land of consumerism, bright lights, and extreme waste. When I arrived at Cate, it was the fi rst time I had heard the word “recycling” uttered everyday. I even had it as my chore in ’25 house. God forbid you throw your Coke can in the trash (those were my initial thoughts). During my junior year at Cate, my exposure to the green movement grew. I switched into Mrs. Powers’ advisee group; it was the fi rst year AP

environmental notes

40

Environmental Science was offered; there was a school-wide recycling competition (mainly between the dorms); and it was the year of rolling blackouts across California. It was a bit like “wake up and smell the coffee” for me (that or “wake up and smell the mulch”). In any case, it was clear green was in.I went to Georgetown University (School of Foreign Service in particular) where I majored in Science, Technology and International Affairs, my focus being the “environment.” I studied energy policy, water policy issues, environmental security, oceanography, development in cities of the south to name a few of the “environmentally-focused” issues I dealt with. I wrote my thesis on traditional agricultural practices in China in the face of scarce resources, mainly land and water. Now, I am in my second year of law school at Lewis & Clark and hoping to emerge in a year in a half with a JD and a Natural Resources Certifi cate. Jokingly, I often tell people I want to save the world hugging one tree at a time, but that’s only because I’m in Oregon, the land of so-called “tree huggers.” In reality, I want to take my environmental law education and go home to China and do environmental work there.

People often ask me what struck my interest in the environment. I never say Al Gore. Surprisingly enough, I fi nd myself, while not the most gung-ho Cate alum, defi nitely attributing my drive for public service and the environment as something I was exposed to at Cate.

I spent the past summer working for a non-profi t in San Francisco, San Francisco Baykeeper, and while in college, SeaWeb Marine Photobank (another environmental non-profi t). As someone who was

lucky enough to go to Cate, a school whose motto is “Servons,” it’s taken me far, above and beyond what I thought was possible in public service (I did make my rounds with foster homes which was good pre-training in working with the community). My hope is (and my friends tell me I’m succeeding on a smaller scale with them, as they now bring their own bags to grocery stores, car pool, and turn the water off while they are brushing their teeth) that I can bring my environmental education back from the States to China.

William O’Rahilly Dowling ’03However Cate approaches environmental issues I would hope that it is not driven (directed) by the global warming craze. Mercury and carbon monoxide are much more harmful than carbon dioxide (which isn’t a pollutant at all), and I think that when we focus on global warming and the dread carbon dioxide, we divert millions of dollars away from projects that can have a positive effect NOW. Despite the alarmist war cries, even the grandest global scheme of carbon credits and emissions reductions would not signifi cantly impact ’global warming’, and that’s if our models are correct, and scientifi cally speaking, models are never correct (though some fi t better than others). And a correlation does NOT imply causation. I think personally that we should focus on creating real restrictions on development in our own country (especially in the West where developers disregard that all organisms, including humans, need water, and that in deserts and most of the west, it can be very scarce), and I think that globally we should focus on the basic necessities such as clean water and being able to grow one’s own food. Some of the recent global warming craze is

sparking interest in biofuels and alternatives to oil, but consumers are ill-informed. An increase in biofuel production means a decrease in food production (crops once used for food are now used for biofuel) and in countries where food is desperately needed! The Prius, hailed as green by likely the same ones crying “stop global warming!” actually has a greater carbon footprint than the H2 (when you include production, especially of the battery), and its battery has a much shorter life and is much more chemically hazardous than generic car batteries!

Climate change is not a man-made phenomenon. Stopping global warming would be like stopping the seasons. Most of what we know is based on imperfect models and imperfect knowledge. The facts are NOT in—science is NOT belief in a politician or even an environmentalist’s rhetoric. Science by defi nition cannot have a consensus and if when a group of researchers who credit their institution with representing “Science” reach a consensus, it’s always wrong. Science does not PROVE, science supports with data.

As an alumni of Cate, I wouldn’t like to see Al Gore teaching science at that school, and I’d hope that students are learning to question everything they hear and think (and research) for themselves rather than learn to follow in step while blindly believing rhetoric and dogma. I feel strongly that there are environmental issues worth tackling, but we must tread carefully, and we must use a practical, rather than an alarmist and dogmatic, approach.

Jesse Sleamaker ’05I’m the president of Northwestern University’s Students for Ecological

and Environmental Development (SEED), whose mission is to pioneer, teach, and model environmental stewardship in order to inspire our future leaders to act in ways that protect and sustain our planet. I came into the organization last year and saw a tremendous need for change. SEED was lethargic and stuck in its ways, attracting the same old types of less-than-dynamic environmentalists, and putting on the same old events. This year we gave it a jump-start: By expanding our inter-dorm energy-saving competition, we created space and time to travel to residences on campus to give a dynamic lesson on sustainability and conservation. The lesson is based on the multiple-intelligences principles of learning, and puts discovery back into the hands of students. (Exercises include a mock Sustainability Committee that has to make funding recommendations.) We’re also bringing together a spring-term “intersections” lecture series that will focus on the intersection of human-rights and environmentalism, on deepening interdisciplinary problem solving capacity, and on engaging in critical discussion of two of the most important issues of our generation. (The lecture series will be a quarterly event, focusing on other intersections like “business and the environment” or “literature and wilderness”.)

environmental notes

41S P R I N G 2 0 0 8

Austin E. Hills ’53 Organic winery

David R. Young ’56 Oceanographer

Davis (Janet Davis/Sam Davis ‘59, Mike Davis ‘62, Don Davis ‘68)Organic farm

C. Michael Haugh ’63Manufacturing partnership/green suppliers network

Thomas Escher ’65Sightseeing San Francisco

Philip Bowles ’69Farming

John Schubert ’70Transportation consulting

Bruce King ’72Ecological building network

Kim Gunther ’72Manufacturing

Alden Marin ’74Wine marketing and distribution

Jamie Bourret ’77 Architecture

Greg Clow ’77Marketing graphics

Alan H. Nichols Jr. ’77Equity fund

Timur Tecimer ’78LEED building

Philip Berolzheimer ’53Charles Berolzheimer ’78Parke Berolzheimer ’80Cedar products/fi re logs

Lee W. Waldrep ’80Architecture

James N. Smith ’81Architecture

Eric Carl Faber ’81Packaging resources

Matthew Morphy ’84Building systems

Audrey Kremer Monke ’84Children’s camp

Jeff Haines ’84School supplies

Bruce King ’85Solar power

Monty Schmitt ’86Natural Resources Defense Council

Richard J. Marks ’86Communications/Creative director

Carter Kirkwood ’87Software

Jason Hotchkiss ’88Home builder

Fred Pope ’89Energy systems

Amanda Clark Happle ’91Organic restaurant

Gillian Friedrichs Ockner ’92Sustainability consulting

Jono Stevens ’92Photovoltaic systems

Hilary Decker Sinnamon ’94Environmental consultingChildren’s furniture manufacturing

Robert Abbott ’95Organic farming

Chris Wittwer ’95Windpower

Cielo Rios ’98Shoes

Richard Rojas ’98Urban planning

Jack Walker ’99Capital management

Vanessa Janss Menke ’99Surf education

Bill Boyd ’00Construction

Ben Christensen ’00Research

Derek Zobrist ’03Energy retrofi ts

Joshua Soper ’03Geologist

ALUMNI GREEN LISTMany Cate alumni are involved in green businesses. Below is a partial list of alumni and their areas of work. Visit www.catealumni.org/?green for more details on their businesses and to add your own.


SPECIAL CLASS NOTE

Richard (McGrath)

MacDonald ’82 of Scotland

has been in Iraq with the

Royal Marines since last year.

Following is an excerpt from

a letter he sent to his Cate

friends and schoolmates.

It seems a long, long time since I was mobilised. The seven weeks I had before stepping on a charter plane to Kuwait passed quickly, taken up with wrapping up civilian life and pre-deployment training. Before spending the last two weeks down in Southern England on a ba-sic infantry refresher course, I said goodbye to my wife, my four and almost-two year-old girls and our six-month old baby boy with a heart so heavy I don’t know how I coped. My job here is to support a Royal Air Force helicopter detachment. Some days are good, some days are mixed, some days are bad. At least over the holidays we had a couple of breaks. At Christmas we had two beers and a glass of wine and din-ner with about sixty other Brits on base. The incoming alarm sounded during the queen’s speech, but as we were packed in ’elbow room only’ at tables, no one moved (I for one didn’t want to spill my drink!).

For New Years we had two beers, watched a fi lm, played charades and a game of poker (I won $15!). Today’s been a good day. I got up early, made it to breakfast for the fi rst time since arriving, got the weekly short military hair cut and picked up a few things I needed from the BX (the base exchange shop). I couldn’t help thinking how quiet things were. I was even conscious of birds singing for the fi rst time (sparrows- I don’t know why, but I was really surprised to fi nd sparrows in Iraq). Of course I laughed when I listened and rea-lised I could hear at least one C-130 Hercules on the runway and a pair of American Blackhawks touching down, but to me the noise levels seemed insignifi cant. We had an ’Incoming! Incoming! Incoming!’ alarm at 0835. As I was within sight of my cabin I sprinted to get to my body armour and laid on the fl oor until the all clear sounded. If there was a ripple in my cheeriness it was the fact the water was turned off in the showers. They do this sometimes for maintenance; it means you have to shave with cold bottled water and if you’re really brave, take a shower with cold bottled water too. When the showers do work we’re limited to 3 minutes. Flying is the exhilarating but frequently scary part of the job. We brief and then go to chow at the ’D-FAC,” the dining facility, which has loads of food and choice, sort of like a modern High School canteen really. Then we begin tasking. If I’m fl ying I suit-up in body armour, avia-tion helmet, assault vest, rifl e and pistol. I can sit between the pilots in the jump seat, but I’d rather sit by the open doors to each side of the

helicopter. I can wear Night Vision Goggles if I want, which turns the world green, but I prefer not to. The senses are dominated by the noise of the engines, the thumping of the rotors, the smell of aviation fuel, the vibrations of the aircraft and the wind/cold of the night. If I’m in the back, my job is to help the crewman/gunner look out for threats, usually small arms tracer, and call out a warning through the intercom while trying to fi gure out the point of origin. The funny thing is that tracer rounds are decep-tively mesmerising in their own way. They’re either red or green with a yellow centre and I know it sounds crazy, but they seem to fl oat innocently up into the sky in a non-threatening manner. While this all sound exciting (if not slightly terrifying) my job is mostly ground-based. We’re a small RAF detachment in a sea of US Air Force and US Army units. While our job has its dangers, the army guys go ’out through the wire’ in convoys to face things on the ground. We’re located next to an emergency med centre, and I have seen dustoff (medical evacuation) Blackhawks come in with wounded; I have also seen awkwardly sagging body bags being unloaded, which hits home hard. In the background there is always the hum and noise of trans-ports coming in and helicopters turning & burning on the pad. The incoming klaxon and alarm went off three times yesterday, which can be scary and tends to put folk on a nervous edge. When they happen there’s a moment of disbelief quickly followed by mild panic as you see others running for cover. We’ve heard and felt the explosions, but so far (fi ngers crossed/knock on wood) we’ve been

lucky. One of the loudest explosions that rocked our bunks and sent a shock wave through our bodies was from a vehicle-bourne improvised explosive device over a mile away - what it must have been like at the scene is hard to imagine. And then of course there’s the sur-real moments- sitting underneath a palm tree by a man-made lake with the sun beating down and listen-ing to Tonga Marines talking in the background; blasting the Landrov-er’s stereo to Nickleback Rockstar with the dust billowing behind and waving to the door gunners as a fl ight of helicopters passes 50 ft overhead; pulling up next to a camel sitting in the back of a lorry in downtown Baghdad; looking down on fi fty or more massive oil tankers in the bay off Kuwait city; fl ying low over Baghdad during the day and waving back to a boy herding goats in a fi eld; watching a ladybird land on my hand and wondering where to let it go in a world of concrete and wind turbulence, or visiting the Al Faw Palace to see the ’rear rear echelon’ clerks sitting at desks surrounded by marble, gold gilt and chandeliers. I’m missing a birthday today, - my middle one. She’s two and my wife says she’s been sitting by the front window lately looking outside and calling for ’Daddy.’ On the bad days I just daydream about walking up to my house, dropping my gear on the front lawn and embracing my family as they come tumbling out the door. It was hard over the holidays, not helped by the fact our military wel-fare phones crashed over Christmas and mail deliveries are few and far between. Anyway, time to grab some food and then start prepping for my brief. Hope this fi nds you all well and safe.

The American PR Sergeant took this picture of Richard MacDonald ’82 during a photo session for the helicopter detachment.

43S P R I N G 2 0 0 8

CLASS NOTES

1935Brose Cramer writes, “I’m still alive at 90! Hope all my other classmates are still the same!” Stowe Phelps is still thriving: writing, playing golf, and enjoying his grandchildren and fi ve great-grandchildren.

1948Bob Chang hopes to see the Class of ’48 at Camp Cate in June for their 60th reunion!

1951Wes Robinson is enjoying retire-ment. He lives in Maryland near his son and daughter.

1959John Hamilton attended the 2007 Cate Taiwan Reception

with other Cate alumni and prospective families. Judd Hanna attended the January Alumni Council meeting in San Francisco before the reception at the St. Francis Yacht Club. Following the reception, he and fellow classmates John Luce, Larry Onderdonk, Jon Newhall, and Bo Davis enjoyed catching up over dinner.

1961John Diamante reports Matthew is doing junior year abroad in London. 2009 will mark the 25th year of Editorial Services (proof-reader.com). Doug Raymond reports that he has discovered that retirement makes his life even more busy!

1964John Kuney is now living in Ojai, California, and enjoys walking his dogs at Rincon Point. He cannot believe he surfed in this ocean without a wetsuit while at Cate!

1966Alex Comfort is the Executive Director of the Cradle of Forestry Interpretive Association, with offi ces in Brevard and Asheville, North Carolina. John Fiske plans to retire and move to Santa Barbara in July 2008.

1968Billy Steinberg’s 10-year-old son, Ezra, is an excellent pitcher and shortstop for his West Los Angeles Little League and All-Star Baseball Teams. Billy manages the teams and marvels that songs and baseball, his two loves since childhood, are still his favorite things.

1969Trevor Thomas recently pub-lished a new history of the Civil War, which is currently being used nationwide by students prepar-ing for this year’s United States Academic Decathlon.

1972 Stephen Royce writes, “Any friend of Cate, alumnus/a or stu-dent wanting any tips on where to stay, dine, or play whilst in the South of France is welcome to call on me by phone, email, or knock on the door.”

1973Andy Stoessel continues to serve as Rector of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Jon Upham writes, “Maybe we can get Chuck Port and Dicke Liselle to cater our 35th! I’ll have my usual ’blue plate special’ in that case! All my love

and best wishes to Betty Wood-worth and Eleanor Caldwell.”

1974Will Anderson’s musical, Return, has been accepted to the New American Musical Festival. This new festival is in its fi rst year in Los Angeles, California, under the hands of Jason Alexander and Marcia Seligman. The show is based on Sonia Levitin’s award-winning novel, The Return, now in its eighth printing. Will also is composing the score for the prime time television show, Moment of Truth, and for the sequel to the stop motion classic, The Year Without a Santa Claus, titled, A Miser Brother’s Christ-mas. Alden Marin is living in LA designing wine labels, writing poetry, and painting pictures. He invites all alumni to visit his site at www.aldenmarin.com. Alden writes, “Long live the phoenix!” Myles Temby is a morning news anchor at KOIT 96.5 FM and trans-portation reporter for ABC/7 KGO TV San Francisco.

1976After attending Cate, Jorge Molina graduated from Univer-sidad de las Americas in Mexico City. He earned a degree in Business Administration and spe-

John Hamilton ’59 and his daughter, Flora, in front a Li Lan painting showing a scene near Taidong on Taiwan’s mountainous east side. John writes, “Looks a little like Carpinteria, don’t you think?”

Jeff Barton’s advisee group on Service Day at Carpinteria Beach. From l-r: Adrian Robins ‘10, Michael Reyes ‘08, Efren Huerta-Ruiz ‘09, Dave Soto ‘08, Anne Sewall ‘08, Emily Xiao ‘08, advisor Jeff Barton


cialized in Hospital Administration and Drugstores. He worked in Clínica Londres for thirty years and now works as a real estate investor and volunteers for a medical research foundation named for his father, Fundación Olegario Molina Montes. Jorge and his wife, Rebeca de la Rosa, live in Cancun, México. Halsted Morris is still skiing and teaching about avalanche awareness and rescue in Colorado. He met up for dinner with Steve Goldenberg in December 2007, and is off to Canada to enjoy some helicopter-skiing.

1977Kirk Phelps had a great time fl y fi shing for salmon in Brit-ish Columbia with his brothers, Charlie ’78 and Cord (father of Austin ’02) in August 2007. They also spent Thanksgiving together with their mom in Reno, Nevada. Kirk writes, “I loved reading that such a high percentage of Caties participate in the Foster Homes program. Go, Doc!”

1979Jim Olmstead reports he is “living the dream and gathering steam.”

1981Michael Brown’s recently

launched Weaver’s Coffee & Tea, which will commemorate 2008 with an all-new lineup of hand-crafted, artisan coffees. Andy Meyer and his wife, Kellen, welcomed a son, Haven Quin, who was born October 7, 2007 weighing 8 pounds, 1 ounce and measuring 21.5 inches long. Baby, mom, big sister (Brynkly), big brother (Zander), and dad are all well. Steve Ostercamp joined a small commodities consultancy in London with sales responsibility for Europe and the Middle East. He enjoys having a fun job where he can use French, German, and Arabic with his clients! John Warner is managing the Arroyo Hondo Preserve in Gaviota, Cali-fornia, with his wife, Jennifer, and running his native plant nursery. He invites classmates to visit!

1982Richard MacDonald was mobi-lized and deployed to Iraq for four months over Christmas with the Royal Air Force. Working with a British helicopter detachment he says, “Things are okay here, sometimes a bit scary (i.e. fl ying over the city at night) and we’re sort of low on luxuries, but we’re all in the same situation, so we make the best of it and try to take care of each other as best we can. We’re ’dry’ here, so you can imagine how much a cold beer would go down right now!”

1984Mac Bowyer is looking forward to coming back and visiting the Mesa soon! Baret Bertea Walker will compete in a car rally start-ing in Budapest and ending in Bamako, a distance covering 4,742 miles. She will be competing with her team, the Iron Camel. Check out the offi cial race website at budapestbamako.org/en.

1985Bruce King, his wife Alexandra and new big sister Caroline are pleased to announce the arrival of a baby boy to their family. Parker Harrison King was born on November 10, 2007 at 3:40 a.m. He weighed 7 pounds 14 ounces and was 20.5 inches long. In addition to his new role as father of two, Bruce continues his three-year term as Alumni Council President.

1987Sarah Richards Gansa reports that baby Renzo (now one year old) is babbling incessantly, cruis-ing the furniture, and is a true delight for his parents, brother, Ruca, and the family’s new kitty, Dante! Mike Morris married Ashley Harrison on September 22, 2007, in Pasadena, California. Alumni in attendance were Mike Kelley ’85, Bill Werksman ’85, Blair Elliott Paige ’86, Jason Burkey-Skye, Dana Cronin, Calysta Drake ’89, Colin Drake, and Kent Elliott.

1989David Andrews married Lisa Ma-rie Steele on September 1, 2007. Rob Vandenburg and Holley Shepard Murphy attended. David continues to work in residential real estate in Boise, ID. He plans to start a new record in February, 2008. Sarah Carpenter continues her third year working as a physi-cian with Doctors Without Borders in Africa. Valarie Janklow Gardner is loving being a mom of two. Her children, Ella Bea and Joshua, keep her on her toes! Jonas Ma-son saw Kipchoge Spencer ’91 at Burning Man this year. He was hoping to kayak the Point Reyes Seashore for Thanksgiving.

1990Ellen Cowan writes, “Greeting Caties! 2007 was a great one, full of growth and challenge. I found myself joining the roster of the New York City Opera, continuing my work with the Aspen Institute and Community Music, and ac-cepting a business development position with Linked In. Join me online: www.linkedin.com/in/

Caties Blair Eliott Paige ’86, Calysta Drake ’89, Colin Drake ’87, Kent Elliott ’88, Jason Burkey-Skye ’87, Dana Cronin ’87, Bill Werksman ’85, and Mike Kelley ’85 with the bride and groom, Ashley Harrison and Mike Morris ’87.

SAVE THE DATECate Celebrates Gaby EdwardsMay 10, 2008Gaby is retiring this year. Please join us for a day-long celebration of her Cate career. Alumni, parents, grandparents, faculty and friends are invited to attend classes and a special all-school assembly, play in Alumni Sports Day spring games, and join Gaby for a dinner in her honor.

For more details, visit www.catealumni.org

class notes

45S P R I N G 2 0 0 8

ellencowan” RaeLee Hudson continues to enjoy practicing law and raising her daughter, Brenna. Nick Meyer married Misty Marie Mueller of St. Louis, Missouri on August 26, 2006. There were sev-eral Caties in attendance, includ-ing, Austin and Liza Blue, Hilary Magowan and her husband Anton, Brett Niven and his wife Amy, John Kim and his wife Susan, and Rusty Bacon ’93, who’s wife Paige was not there because she was home with their one-week old daughter, Caroline.

1991Tina Abbott Wainwright and her husband, Shep, are building a house in Newport Beach and plan to move in April 2008.

1992Danielle Pergament married Devin Friedman on July 7, 2007, in Tuscany, Italy. Alumni in atten-dance were Michelle Homme ’91, Sam Hansen, Laura Clark Ma-cleod, and Lisa Browne Stanson. Former Cate Music Department Faculty Member Andy Camp-bell offi ciated. Mara Krieger Sweeney is a doctor of internal medicine in Santa Barbara. She and her husband, Dan Sweeney, have two children, 4 year-old Nathaniel and 1 year-old Addison.

1993Wyatt Gruber was married in New York at the Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers to Jane Frances Griffi n on October 20, 2007. Jeb Owen graduated from the Univer-sity of California, Riverside, with a PhD in entomology in August, 2007, and is a new assistant professor at Washington State University. He conducts research on the interactions of the immune system with parasitic insects that are responsible for disease

transmission. He sends his fond-est regards to Cheryl Powers, as the recent Bulletin article reminded him of what an out-standing teacher she is. Jeb, his wife Amanda, and their two kids, 2 year-old Ryder and 8 month-old Teague, saw Josh Conviser ’92 and his wife Barbara on recent trip to Denver. He is in touch with classmate Jamie Colman, who is also living in Washington, in Seattle. John Schneider and his wife, Jenny, had a baby daughter on December 19, 2007. Madeleine “Maddie” Schneider joins her par-ents and her 2-year-old brother, Christopher.

1994Amy Lopez-Hollis Balducci and her husband, Charles, happily celebrated their third wedding anniversary in August, 2007. Amy is working at Cushman and Wakefi eld in commercial real estate in New York City. They live in a two-bedroom apartment and welcome any classmates to visit! Jon Chang and his wife, Kather-ine Pike, welcomed a baby girl, Harriet Sheng Yi Chang, on June 11, 2007. Jamie Morris Persoon is teaching 5th grade at Canalino Elementary School in Carpinteria, California.

1995Catherine S. Dudley has opened Mix Studio, a new Eastside studio in Austin, Texas. As an artist, Catherine collects visual ele-ments and works them into her art through photography, stencils, and collage. She partnered with photographer Sarah Wilson, who recently moved back to Austin from NYC. Sara Doughty Giordani, her husband, John, and big-brother, James, welcomed Daniel “Landi” on June 6, 2007. Karen Herbert Gustafson and

her husband, Zack, are the proud parents of a new baby girl, Anna Sophia Gustafson. She was born at 11:19 a.m., Tuesday, December 18, 2007. She weighed 6 pounds 9 ounces and she was 20 inches long. Jack Jackson married Julie Anne Applegarth on July 28, 2007, at Quail Lodge in Carmel Valley, California. Alumni in attendance were Nelson Jones ’48, groomsman David Dolby, Hadley Tomicki, Shepley Smith ’94, Colin Browne, and Brooks Rosenquist. After the reception, Nelson Jones ’48 whisked Jack and Julie away in a classic 1934 Packard Club Sedan.

1996Gregory Lemmons successfully passed the 2007 California Bar Exam.

1997David Amerikaner is a fi rst year law student University of Pennsylvania Law School. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in eco-nomics and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government with a Master’s in public policy, Ronny Luhur is very much enjoying working in DC at Environmental Defense. Adam Rives moved to Kansas City to do his residency in Orthopedic Surgery. He writes, “If anyone’s in town, give me a call!” Bik Tomkoria continues to work in bond analysis.

1998Nadine Haobsh’s fi rst book, Beauty Confi dential, is in stores now. Nadine is embarking on a college book tour this spring and is excited for the publication of her second book in September 2008. She lives in LA and invites former classmates to email her at nadine@nadinehaobsh.

com. Eli Miller is still living in Rhode Island, pursuing his rock ’n’ roll dreams with his band, Zox. They released their new album on January 22 and will be touring through the US, Europe, and Japan this year. Check them out at www.zoxband.com. Lea Redmond has begun her fi rst adventure in mass-production!

Casey McCann ’97, Camille Freeman ’97, Chris Skelton ’02, Grayson Bryant ’95, Blair Elliott Paige ’86, Stephen Worsley ’75, Amy Nichols ’93, Geoff McDonald ’89, Alex McCormack ’86, and Arthur Conner ’87 sorted, packaged, and boxed 33 barrels of goods—over 3,000 pounds of food at the San Francisco Food Bank, December 4, 2007.

David Dolby ’95, Hadley Tomicki ’95, and Colin Browne ’95 at Jack Jackson’s ’95 wed-ding in Carmel Calley, California

Lea Redmond’s hand drawn puzzles are brain teasers that combine two things and two words. The drawing to the right: accordiant

Cate alumni Ashwin Atre ’05, Justin Ha ’05, Danny Seigle ’05, Alex Farber ’06, Sebastian Vollering ’06, Celine Cutter ’06, and Laura Seidman ’06 at Welcome Week at the Uni-versity of California at Berkeley.

class notes


Her hand-drawn puzzles are sur-realistic creatures that combine two things and two words. You can see her puzzle cards at www.phenomenonsense.com

1999Peter Given and his brother opened SMARTBOX, a portable storage company in San Fernando, California. Adam Horowitz is in his second year at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

2001Char Carlson is living in San Francisco and is a second-year medical student at University of California San Francisco. Char can be found playing her old time fi ddle in cafes around the city when she is not studying.

Julian Davis was spotted at the Monterey Jazz Festival at UCSB. Kathleen Dowling is working in the Alumni and Development Offi ce for Columbia’s School of Journalism. Uche Kanu is pursu-ing his PhD in medical science.

2002Andrew Hawkins was the tour guide for the USS Ronald Reagan’s media visitors during the Santa Barbara Navy League’s Welcome Weekend. Allie Phelps is living in San Francisco. Laura Oliver ’01, Laramie Glen ’03, Alex Karlinski ’03, Lauren McEwen ’03, and Ben Luikart ’04 have all come to visit Allie and her brother, Will Phelps ’04, this year! Davina Pike still plays squash occasion-ally and sends her best to Coach Terry Eagle!

2003JJ Seaman is living and working in San Francisco.

2004Arrington McCoy is in a Boston University International Honors Program called Rethinking Global-ization. After a 3-week orientation in DC, the group traveled to Tan-zania, Dar Es Salam, Zanzibar, and India. Lauren Lambert ’05 is also in the program; they took a Cate picture after trekking Mt. Meru!

2005Candace Griffi th is spending sec-ond semester of her junior year interning at Beacon Consulting Group, a full service government relations fi rm representing hu-man service, youth development, health care, and cultural organiza-tions across the US. A politics

science major at Ohio Wesleyan, Candace is excited about this new challenge! Tina Seaman is a junior at Boston College and traveling to Madrid this winter.

2007Ben Anshutz is enjoying life at Tufts University. First semester, three of his six classes were music. He joined a progressive rock band, and they are playing local shows and recording. Lydian Blossom is loving New York! She has been see-ing plays and taking great classes. At Sarah Lawrence, Lydian joined a Shakespeare Troupe preparing to perform Hamlet with an all female cast. She will also light up the stage in a play about Iraqi women. Lydian loves living near classmate Kyle Hester and visits him often.

Jeb Owen ’93 is the new Assistant Profes-sor of Entomology at Washington State University. He is pictured with his wife, Amanda, and their sons, Ryder and Teague, all sporting Cougar gear!

1943 • 1948 • 19531958 • 1963 • 19681973 • 1978 • 19831988 • 1993 • 19982003

The Mesa hasn’t changed.........Have you?

Camp Cate • June 6–8for more information and to register:

www.catealumni.org

Catherine Dudley ’95 collects visual ele-ments and works them into her art through photography, stencils and collage

CAMP CATE2008All welcome.Reunion classes: Your feet are required.

Danny Seigle ’05’s parents, Janet and Michael, on their way dinner with Danny and fellow Caties: Morgan Dyson ’05, Celine Cutter ’06, and Sebastian Vollering ’06.

47S P R I N G 2 0 0 8

MARRIAGES 1987 Mike Morris to Ashley Harrison September 22, 2007 1989 David Andrews to Lisa Marie Steele September 1, 2007 1990 Nick Meyer to Misty Marie Mueller August 26, 2006

1992 Danielle Pergament to Devin Friedman July 7, 2007 1993 Wyatt Gruber to Jane Frances Griffi n October 20, 2007 1995 Jack Jackson to Julie Anne Applegarth July 28, 2007

BIRTHS 1981 Haven Quin Meyer to Kellen and Andy Meyer October 7, 2007 1985 Parker Harrison King to Alexandra and Bruce King November 10, 2007 1993 Madeleine “Maddie” Schneider to Jenny and John Schneider December 19, 2007 1994 Harriet Sheng Yi Chang to Katherine Pike and Jon Chang June 11, 2007 1995 Daniel “Landi” Giordani to John and Sara Doughty Giordani June 6, 2007 Anna Sophia Gustafson to Zach and Karen Herbert Gustafson December 18, 2007

Distinguished Alumnus AwardIn 1972, Cate School Alumni Association honored its fi rst Distinguished Alumnus. Coincidentally, he happened to be Cate’s very fi rst graduate, Dohrmann K. Pischel ’14. Since then, the Alumni Association has honored over 20 Alumni for distinguished service to the School, a distinguished career, or exemplary public service. Recipients of the Award include a senator, scientists, several long-time trustees, entrepreneurs, artists, and philanthropists.

Many Cate alumni can remember gazing up from a book in the McBean Library to read citations of the Distinguished Alumnus Award recipients, perhaps wondering if they might someday do something to earn such as honor. Though the Award has not been given every year, the Alumni Council recently voted to make it an annual award. The fi rst few Awards were displayed in the McBean Library, but soon they became too numerous to fi t into one location. Beginning in 1998, the Awards are displayed in the Raymond Commons, Keck Conference Room, and various classrooms. In these more prominent locations, it is hoped that current Cate students will develop a better appreciation of the School’s past and, more importantly, an appreciation of how a Cate education can be put to good use.

If you would like to nominate an alumnus/a for this honor, please contact Grayson Bryant ’95 in the Alumni and Development offi ce with your nomination.

Anna Sophia Gustafson (Karen Herbert Gustafson ’95)

Harriet Sheng Yi Chang (Jon Chang ’94)

Laura Clark Macleod ’92, Lisa Browne Stan-son ’92, former music department faculty member Andy Campbell, Danielle Pergament Friedman ’92, Sam Hansen ’92, and Michelle Homme ’91 at Danielle’s wedding to Devin Friedman, July 7, 2007.

David Andrews ’89 and Lisa Marie Steele

Caroline holding Parker Harrison King (Bruce King ’85)

Jack Jackson ’95 and Julie Anne Applegarth at Quail Lodge in Carmel Valley, California. Nelson Jones ’48 played chauffeur.

Haven Quin Meyer (Andy Meyer ’81)

Daniel “Landi” and big brother James (Sara Doughty Giordani ’95)


IN MEMORIAM

My good friend and classmate, Jo-seph Corbett Donohue, Cate, 1959, died on October 5, 2007, after battling an extended illness with cancer. “Corb” and I really started getting close and reacquainted at our 20th reunion in 1979, one of the fi rst on the Mesa. Corb had just gotten married (for the third time) to Melantha Tatum, the love of his life, I believe, to this day. Corb and Melantha combined their two families with Corb’s daughter Jessica, now a botanist in Ashland, Oregon, with Melantha’s two children, Daniela Sea, now an actress in New York, and Payson Muller, a restoration stonemason in London. Although Corb’s and Melantha’s marriage sadly didn’t last, they remained good friends and Melantha’s children always regarded Corb as their best friend and father. I mention these family details at the outset because they were such an important part of Corb’s life. And what a life it was.

Corb was one of those rare souls who lives life to the fullest. Being in his company was always a plea-sure. His accomplishments were wide and varied and his work was the source of endless stories. His professional career ranged from being one of the early promot-ers of Motown Records to being a successful sales executive for Quiksilver to helping develop one of the fi rst television home shop-ping networks in Asia. My real affection and respect for Corb derives from something quite simple: Corb himself. His en-thusiasm for living each day well was infectious. He surfed nearly every day of his life, even though the constant exposure to the sun started a skin carcinoma that fi nally ended his life. But I don’t think Corb ever had the slightest regret. He knew the risks, and being in the water, and catching the next wave, was simply an

important part of how he lived his life. He was never really very far from a beach, even when he was in New York, Honolulu, Beijing, Sydney, or San Clemente. Corb was an accomplished sportsman, a world-class surfer, a varsity athlete at Cate in soccer and tennis, later a skilled sailor, and a superb fl y fi sherman. It was Corb and Melantha who intro-duced me to a wonderful, gin-clear stream in the Rockies called Bellows, which drains into the Rio Grande up near its headwaters at La Garita Ranch at Wagon Wheel Gap, Colorado. Numerous mutual friends have benefi ted from our 15-year association with La Garita. It has become a touchstone of strength and vitality, and being there with Corb out on Bellows was one of life’s unique pleasures. By the time Corb had introduced me to La Garita, we had already been fl y fi shing companions for many years, fi shing the Klamath in the fall for steel head with our classmate, the late August H. “Gus” Schilling, also a ’59 Cate classmate, and a few other close friends and alumni from Corb’s days at Cal Berkeley. It was on the banks of the Klamath that many Cate stories got told and retold. Indeed, for me, those fall days were, among other fi ne things, an occasion for renewal of our fondness for the Mesa, which for us, was where our lives really began. We had that very much in common. I mentioned that Corb was fun to be around. I’ll just mention one example. Corb, despite having to live down a 1950s’ appellation of “pseudo-intellectual,” was an ex-traordinarily well-read, educated, and cultivated man – with a won-derful turn of phrase. I don’t know

where he got this originality, but he read The New Yorker cover-to-cover for many years and always knew more about its contents than I, and I am a regular sub-scriber. I mention The New Yorker because Corb admired good writing and original expression. About two years ago, my wife, Karen, and I were lunching on a patio with Corb at a place called the Hamburger Haven in Pagosa Springs, Colorado; we were on our way to La Garita. The hamburg-ers, which were excellent, were served with some particularly spicy chilis. Corb bit into one, smiled brightly with pleasure, and exclaimed, “Now, that has authority.” For some inimitable reason, for Karen and me, those four words defi ne Corb. Corb, to me, always seemed indestructible. Among the most physically fi t men I know of those of us over 60, I thought we would become truly old together. He was courageous in fi ghting what de-veloped into a lethal lymphoma. I never heard him complain once. Within two weeks of his death, because I didn’t know how rapidly the disease was making him sick-er in just a few weeks, I called him to ask whether he was game for the Klamath this year one more time. He begged off, but casually, saying he was completing an-other bout of chemotherapy and would be back in touch soon. The next thing I knew he was gone. So I am left remembering Corb as an indefatigably positive spirit. He made me feel comfortable. I miss him every day – I think of him that often. He is one of those people who are not going to fade away.

J. Corbett Donohue ’59February 10, 1941-October 5, 2007by John Caldwell ’59

49S P R I N G 2 0 0 8

March 2008 1 Boston Alumni Happy Hour Grayson Bryant ’95 Legal Sea Foods, Charles Square, 20 University Rd., Cambridge, MA

6 San Francisco Alumni Happy Hour Umami, 2909 Webster St, San Francisco 6:30-8:30 p.m.

April 2008 1 Santa Barbara Phonathon Cate School, 6-8 p.m.

3 Los Angeles Phonathon & Alumni Council Meeting Hosted by Dan Emmett ’99, 6:30-8:30 p.m. 8 San Francisco Phonathon Hosted by John Luce ’59, 6-8 p.m.

10 Pasadena Reception Hosted by Marne Crowley Hon. ’90 6:30-8:30 p.m.

TBD Orange County Reception

May 2008 4 7th Annual Wine Tasting Robert Keenan Winery, St. Helena, CA

10 Spring Alumni Sports Day Grandparents Day Gaby Edwards Day

June 2008 6 – 8 Camp Cate Cate School

7 Annual Alumni Council Meeting

30 End of Fiscal Year

CALENDAR


TRUSTEESMembers

Christopher ArnoldHenry F. Burroughs ’68

John D. Caldwell ’59Kate Colmery Firestone

Lawrence N. Gelb, MDStephen J. Giusto ’80

Perri V. HarcourtDavid Horowitz

Margaret Hyde ’92Blake W. Jones ’81

Jenny JonesBruce W. King ’85,

Alumni Council PresidentPeter F. King ’80

James D. KlingbeilChristopher P. Maloney ’80

J.C. MassarSean M. McAvoy ’82

Monique Parsons ’84Wendy Read,

CPO PresidentEric C. Taylor ’80

Mark S. Whiting ’74

Offi cersChairman of the Board

George B. James

President Greg H. Kubicek ’74

TreasurerNorman F. Sprague III, MD

Headmaster/SecretaryBenjamin D. Williams IV

Life TrusteesRichard D. Baum ’64

James F. Crafts Jr.Dan A. Emmett ’99

Nelson D. Jones ’48

Faculty Advisory Trustees

Peter Arango, English/History teacherPatrick Collins, Art Department Chair

Allegra Roth and Ainsley Hegener lead a discussion on Of Mice and Men in their English 10 class Sophomore Humanities class from l–r: Kirk Seaman, Thomas Yu, Victor Grajski, Christina Lowe, Brett Diemer, teacher Anna Fortner, Tyler Barnes-Diana, Kara Oopik, Tori Donovan, Stephanie Ruys de Perez, Megan FalveyFront Row (facing away) l–r: Ainsley Hegener, Allegra Roth

51S P R I N G 2 0 0 8

CATE SCHOOL

1960 Cate Mesa RoadPost Offi ce Box 5005

Carpinteria, CA93014-5005

www.cate.orgTel. 805.684.4127

Non-Profi tOrganizationU.S. Postage

PAIDSanta Barbara, CA

Permit #1020

Documents

Spring 2008 Bulletin