Coffee, black pepper, silk oak plantation agroforestry in Yercaud After the conference in Salem we drove up to the Eastern Ghats. First we visited Kohlli Hills (which we thought was near where we were staying but turned out to be 90km in the opposite direction!), then we drove to Yercaud where we stayed in a really nice resort (3-day weekend, there wasn't much choice in hotels) for a couple nights. Forests were mostly confined to the lower elevations of the hills at Yercaud and the upper part was lush agroforestry systems growing coffee and spices.
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Starting my talk I was invited to give the Inaugural Address at the National Conference on Impact of Climate Change on Biodiversity at Periyar University, Salem, Tamil Nadu last week. At first they asked for a 90 minute talk (!) but then dropped it to 45 minutes a few weeks ahead of the conference. Since the conference was happening right before a 3-day weekend (Id-Milad) we decided to all go then spend a couple nights in a nearby Hill Station in the Eastern Ghats afterwards. While the US talks of putting armed guards in the schools to prevent shootings, India is legislating overcoats for schoolgirls to prevent rapes. Anyone else see something wrong with this picture?
Taking a GPS point in Arewala While both kids were on their class trips, Tim and I headed out to MM Hills with Nagendra to get GPS points for each village and also to go see a cattle camp. It was a whirlwind trip with visits to all 9 of the villages I'm working in over a 4-day period. Nagendra has almost finished all the interviews (he had about 4 left to do in some of the upper-elevation villages plus we decided to drop one of the low-elevation villages and selected a new village, closer to the Reserve, on this trip, so that's another 10). The visit was good. We started off with a visit to Siddappa's parents who live in a village on the way to MM Hills. They were very sweet and hospitable and we got to drink fresh milk from their cows, eat rice from their paddies, and sambar and peanuts from their fields. I felt honored. Fair warning: This one is a rant. If you're not in the mood, wait a bit and I'll post again when I have my latest field visit pictures sorted.
Watching one's own country through the lens of foreign media is always interesting. Today I see the US portrayed as a vigilante nation. We shot the native people of the continent we landed on, shot the people from the population from whence we came, cowboys shot whoever got in their way, it's no wonder that today we shoot children. We just like to carry guns and shoot people with them. Dawn with classmates For a portion of the time that Kalani's class is in Delhi, Kekai's class (and one above and one below) took a bus trip to Wayanad district, Kerala. They left on Friday morning (6am!) and will be home tonight. Tim and I took advantage of the extra time to make a trip to MM Hills for some more data collection and GPS mapping of the villages. Kekai seemed excited for the trip but since he wasn't allowed to bring a cell phone, we don't know how it's gone. Kalani & his friends in their train berth Kalani's growing up. Yesterday we put him on a train with kids from his class and the two classes above him (tho, small school so the last class is kids up to about 10th grade). It was a bit nerve-wracking since the teacher/chaperones were some of the last to arrive but the kids were all excited. They'll be on the train for 44.5 hours and arrive in Delhi tomorrow morning. Kalani's got 7 days in Delhi and surrounds, then a 36-hour train ride back, arriving in Bangalore on the night of 21 December. If you want to see where he is in real time, go to this link and type in 12629 (for Delhi bound train) or 12650 for his return train (click on the train name that appears below the search box (he left Dec 11 and will leave Delhi Dec 19), you may want to have Google Earth open). Had a good birthday celebration. Tim and the boys bought me a cake (it says "Happy Birthday Ma" in Kannada) with the best candle I've ever seen. It went up like a pine tree on fire, then the petals opened into a lotus with candles at the tips. Pretty darn cool. Not so cool was that it didn't start playing "Happy Birthday" in plingy computereze until sometime in the middle of the night and then it took 12 hours to figure out how to shut it up for more than a few minutes at a time (final solution: pull all the wires). Also got lunch at one of Bangalore's two breweries (Kalani had his first hamburger since leaving the US) and walked through the ritziest mall in Bangalore (Louis Vuitton, anyone?). Sure is a different world than the one I'm calling home these days. The boys also got me some jingly silver anklets (pics below). Did you just get home from your daily commute, got out of the car in which you drove alone to work, preheated your oven for dinner, removed a cold beverage from your refrigerator, and turned on your computer to see what's new with the world? If so, like all the rest of us Americans, you should not be holding your head very high at this moment. I have just returned from Mumbai (Bombay, for those of you still using the British city names) where I was an invited speaker (Resource Person, they called me) at the Nagindas Khandwala College International Seminar on Society, Politics and Climate Change. It was a great experience, Indian to the core but strangely reminiscent of conferences in Hawaii. And I can clearly say, Indians do not appreciate the carbon production and lack of responsibility for it that they see coming from the U.S.
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