Heal the Bay Blog

I’m a lifetime Bruin (birth, preschool, bachelor’s, Master’s, doctorate and currently teaching) so the title of this post doesn’t come easy.  I couldn’t bring myself to write “I Heart USC” because of the history:  Rodney Peete running down a certain UCLA football victory or Trojan guard Harold Miner punking the Don MacLean-led Bruins.  My own son Jake wore cardinal and gold braces just to piss me off. Despite the fact I’ve sat on the USC Sea Grant Advisory Board for over a decade, I hate that white horse almost as much as I hate the Trojan fight song.

All of that changed last Saturday.  The Santa Monica High School Vikings (they wear blue and gold and use the UCLA fight song as their own) competed in the Surf Bowl, the L.A.-Orange County competition of NOAA’s regional Ocean Sciences Bowl.  As always, USC and JPL hosted the battle of the aqua-nerds.  Last year, USC played host to another heart-wrenching defeat that shattered the Gold family: Arcadia (clad in cardinal and gold) beat Samohi on the last question of the tourney at the buzzer.  A half-court three-pointer cost Samo a trip to St. Pete, Florida.

This year was different. 

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Dear Governor Brown:

I understand that you are facing California’s budget crisis head on and I agree with your priority setting for the state: digging us out of the budget crisis is priority one through 100. However, on behalf of all of those that care about clean water in the Los Angeles region, we really need your help. Making appointments to boards that don’t necessarily share your views on environmental protection is a high priority and every month that goes by without your appointments could be a series of bad decisions for California’s environment.

For example, the Los Angeles Regional Water Board met on Thursday and one of their first orders of business was the approval of a new board chair. Typically, this is a pro-forma decision. The vice chair gets appointed to the chair leadership. Unfortunately, a Coastal Commission hearing broke out at the Simi Valley meeting with politics getting in the way of traditional policy. Every year for the last ten years (but one – in 2005 vice-chair Tim Shaheen decided to pass on the responsibility), the vice chair has become the chair. Until Thursday.

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How often can you create big local change with just a few key strokes (140 to be exact)? That’s what the Shorty Awards on Twitter are all about.

Today winds up the Twitter Shorty Awards campaign and our favorite master gardener, Mud Baron, reached the 500 nominations mark, thus, Los Angeles County school gardens win big time. Mud works to build sucessful school gardens for kids in L.A. and has been working tirelessly to get all kinds of supplies and pledges throughout his Twitter campaign on the condition that he receives at least 500 nominations. He reached and surpassed his goal.

Check out Mud’s nominations. You can also still add your own even though the initial goal was met. Follow Mud on Twitter at @Cocoxochitl and let him know you support what he does.

Urban green space instead of concrete isn’t just better for the students, it’s also better for the Bay!