Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Roadrunner: Kern Kaweah Chapter'S April 16Th Spring Banquet To Feature Awards, Wind Wolves
The Roadrunner: Kern Kaweah Chapter'S April 16Th Spring Banquet To Feature Awards, Wind Wolves
The Roadrunner: Kern Kaweah Chapter'S April 16Th Spring Banquet To Feature Awards, Wind Wolves
Bimonthly Publication of the Kern-Kaweah Chapter of the Sierra Club — March/April 2005
Yes, I wish to attend the 2005 Annual Banquet of the Kern-Kaweah Chapter of the Sierra Club on Saturday, April
16.
I have included a check for the total at $18.00 per person.
Number attending: ____ (@ $18.00) Total amount: $___________
Desired entrée: place number requested for each entree:
____ chicken marsala ____ vegetarian soup
Please mail check and this coupon to: Harry Love, 13500 Powder River Ave., Bksfld, CA, 93314 by April 8.
Please send your nominations, giving the name and the reasons you nominate the person, by March 22, 2005 to:
Janet Wood, P.O. Box 3543, Visalia, CA 93278; e-mail: jswood@mac.com, or by telephone: 559.739. 8527.
CONSERVATION NEWS: Hunting in State Parks: Bill is dead for this year. Stockmen’s Bill: Still a
threat to the Wilderness. There’s been a lot of loud protests, some heard and perhaps heeded. Billboards:
Smart lobbyists get bill through, governor can veto it. Letters from you to him could help a lot. (Some
things never change—though it seems much more frantic these days.)
Where did all these quotes come from? Mr. James Leonard of Hanford was cleaning out his files, found this number and
sent it to us. It is printed on the old purple-producing ditto machine—and producing color means it was not only purple print
but purple all over your hands and elsewhere.
Mr. Leonard is one of the charter members of the Kern Kaweah Chapter. He was the first editor of the Newsletter but not
of this number. Mr. Leonard is now nearly 85 and doing well. By the way, his wife was a student of Ann Williams when she
was in the 8th grade.
Wonderful memories—Thank you, Mr. Leonard, for sharing this “artifact” from 1953 with us.
Coming Up
CNRCC Desert Committee trips. For a complete listing contact Craig Deutsche 2231 Kelton Ave, Los Angeles,
CA 90064, (310-477-6670). Trips may also be received via e-mail from <deutsche@earthlink.net>.
May 21,22 (sat,sun) Hetch Hetchy. Details below.
Sept 8 to 11 (thur to sun) Sierra Summit, San Francisco. The Sierra Club will hold its first large-scale
convention. It will bring 3,000 members and activists from all over the country together with top-notch keynote
speakers and entertainers. There will be 60+ educational workshop sessions, an exhibition hall filled with
hundreds of the latest outdoor adventure and “green” ideas, products and technologies, and an opportunity to
showcase the Sierra Club’s work. It will be a time to celebrate accomplishments that show us just how much we
can do together and give us an opportunity to talk together about the Club and its future direction.
6 THE ROADRUNNER
MIDGEBUZZINGS
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
In the old film version of “The Grapes of Wrath,” the Joad family, sharecroppers driven from their Oklahoma
farm by drought and the callous indifference of landowners to their plight, come to a river just before their
entrance into California. The men strip to their long johns and immerse themselves in the first water of any
quantity they have seen since the beginning of their desperate journey across the desert. The film is focused upon
the bleakness of the family’s situation. But in the background, in soft contrast to human misery, and clearly
audible to anyone with discerning hearing, are the wistful and delicate calls of killdeer.
Another film involves the decline of a woman into the helplessness of old age. Although “Driving Miss Daisy” is
gently humorous, there are moments of great poignancy and sadness. In one late evening scene, Miss Daisy,
having lost mastery of her life, is left alone for a brief time in the back seat of her automobile on a country road
while her driver, Hoke, disappears into the darkness to relieve himself. In growing panic and with a trembling
voice, she calls his name: “Hoke? Hoke?” Again in the background, in quiet opposition to her mounting terror, are
the calming sounds of tree frogs.
On the eve of the fiery siege of Baghdad, I saw an interview with a family conducted by a courageous reporter.
The desperate father of a diabetic daughter demonstrated his family’s plan to keep her alive when the electricity
they relied upon would be lost, and the medications necessary for her life could no longer be refrigerated. He led
the interviewer to a well in his back garden, and demonstrated how the medications would be lowered in a sealed
jar to the cool water below. Yet even in that grim place, with the poor prospect for his success, the air was alive
with the madcap and merry songs of sparrows.
Arising one morning in late January, well before daylight, I could not shake off thoughts about the growing
tragedy of our national situation and of the world. I was grieving both for humanity and for the natural
environment. I had not been consoled the previous evening by reassurances from historically sophisticated friends
that we have been in such straits before and have gotten past them, and will again. As I see it, even in the worst of
times in human history there have been vast unexploited places in the world of nature from which we could draw
aesthetic solace and resources for physical health. Now those places are rapidly disappearing, as appreciation
gives way to the crush of population and our seemingly inherent ambition for dominance and gain. Then, as I
went out into the dark for the morning paper, I heard, startlingly close, a Great Horned Owl. His was a familiar
voice, but this time I heard it in the form of a question: “Who are you? Who? Who?”
How appropriate it seemed to me on that dark morning to be interrogated by a member of another species, a
citizen of the natural world which my own species is destroying with appalling speed and efficiency. Indeed, who
are we? Will Hopkins’ morning dawn upon an empty world, or will we understand what we must understand
before the last lights off the black West go? The owl’s question must become our question now.
Ann Williams
THE ROADRUNNER 7
SPECIAL NOTE From the KRV Hiking Club: The April 23–24
Mount Jenkins 20th anniversary celebration has been cancelled,
due to family obligations for Ruby and Bill Jenkins. The
maintenance hike along the PCT from Walker Pass to
Jenkins/Owens saddle on April 23 at 9:00 is still scheduled. If you
have loppers please bring them to cut brush along the trail. No
other tools will be available this time.”