MUSE and Earthday.fm

I wish to direct you to this older blog post page, and scroll down to the Walkin’ Jim Stoltz event:

http://blueridgediscoveryproject.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-11-10T09:41:00-05:00&max-results=20&reverse-paginate=true

And now to this:

http://blueridgediscoveryproject.blogspot.com/2010_10_10_archive.html

Joyce Rouse, or Earth Mama, introduced our community to Jim Stoltz, in 2009, a gift for which we will all be eternally grateful. Joyce has served on the board since its beginning (1998) and Jim was a co-founder of MUSE , or Musicians United to Sustain the Environment: http://www.musemusic.org/.

The point of this post is to direct all of our blog fans and friends to this new web radio cast: Earthday.fm. It is free and self-explanatory. MUSE has aligned its organization with Earthday.fm in an effort to enrich and strengthen their mission.

Joyce and her husband, Richard, have been incredibly supportive of BRDC from the beginning. Joyce will step into the role of MUSE President in early March, and since I currently hold that title with BRDC, she and I have agreed to share ideas and board issues as we both move through our parallel learning curves. Further, MUSE recently granted BRDC $1000 to be used in BRDC programs’ art components. Thank you, MUSE!

Scott Jackson-Ricketts

Project Fish Bugs Winter Survey 2.25.12

Finally, after rescheduling twice, a group of 14 hardy individuals gathered at Rock Bottom Cabins along Wilson Creek this morning for our winter aquatic invertebrate study, thus wrapping up our promise to take samples in all four seasons. With wind howling and snow swirling about our red faces, we took two large and several small samples, collecting a total of 84 organisms including one (so far) unidentified fish and two salamanders. The creek was in fast flow due to recent precipitation, air temperature was 35F and water temp holding at 36F.

Roach-like, giant, and winter stoneflies, flat-headed and other mayflies, net-spinning and case building caddis flies, water pennies, hellgrammites, midges, and true fly larvae were all collected with the stoneflies and mayflies by far most abundant. Because of the weather conditions, we were not able to conduct a more thorough inventory, but everyone had the opportunity to look at some of the smaller organisms and outstanding features under the microscopes, along with taking the time for some field sketching.

BRDC was represented by Eric Harrold, Aaron Floyd, and Scott Jackson-Ricketts. High school teachers Rebecca Absher and Deborah Grief brought students from Grayson County High School’s ECO Club, and Lisa Benish, local Scout leader, provided Boy Scouts. This was one of if not the best attended of all our surveys, with 9 young people present. Without exception, everyone applied themselves with surprising enthusiasm during the 2 ½ hours we gave to the effort.