Imagine, Discover, Celebrate Earth Day, Saturday, April 21, at the Michigan City Public Library

Volume 17, Number 15 Thursday, April 19, 2001 Imagine, Discover, Celebrate Earth Day, Saturday, April 21, at the Michigan City Public Library by Maggie Beyer There was a wake-up call in 1970, a call from people concerned with our environment that reminded us that we were all trav- elers on Planet Earth and it was time to help protect our space- traveling home. We began recycling, cleaning up, caring about the air we breathe, endangered animals. .and it felt good. Thirty years later, the call is still being heard as people around the world are observing Earth Day as an annual awareness day, calling attention to still-existing problems of air, water and soil pollution, habitat destruction and how depletion of nonrenewable resources can be slowed or reversed, if enough people join in. Here in our own backyard, Earth Day will be Saturday, April 21, at the Michigan City Public Library, when local people have gathered local resources to show and tell, see and hear, what people can do to help protect our Earth for future generations. There will be films, experts on recycling, natural gardening and composting, music, refreshments and a ceremonial planting in the library court- yard for all to share. Botanist Nicole Kalkbrenner will be one of the speakers on earth friendly gardening using native plants. Her degree is in environmental sci- ence from Miami University in Ohio, comes from a farming background and now works with J.S. New and Associates, an environmental consulting firm Art by April Fallon. in Walkerton which is developing one of the most complete native plant nursery in the Midwest. The firm consults with developers like Tryon Farms, municipalities, state parks and land owners who want to keep a natural habitat viable with as little change as possible as land is developed. It’s a look at the natural resources available on a piece of land that even small homeowners can use. Botanist Nicole Kalkbrenner with some native prairie plants, suitable for sandy soil. Earth Day Continued on Page 2 Page 2 April 19, 2001 911 Franklin Street • Michigan City, IN 46360 219/879-0088 • FAX 219/879-8070 In Case Of Emergency, Dial e-mail: News/Articles - [email protected] email: Classifieds - [email protected] http://www.bbpnet.com/Beacher/ Published and Printed by THE BEACHER BUSINESS PRINTERS 911 Delivered weekly, free of charge to Birch Tree Farms, Duneland Beach, Grand Beach, Hidden Shores, Long Beach, Michiana Shores, Michiana MI and Shoreland Hills. The Beacher is also Subscription Rates delivered to public places in Michigan City, New Buffalo, LaPorte and Sheridan Beach. 1 year $26 6 months $14 3 months $8 1 month $3 “Sometimes land will have its own natural seed bank,” Nicole said, talking about other plantings in woodland areas, “If you clear the woodland areas of the non-native exotic varieties like buckthorn and hon- eysuckle, you can find a whole ground cover of wildflowers that have been shaded over by the exotics and are just waiting to grow. They’ve been lying dormant for years, and when we use a controlled burn or other methods, they come up again. It’s a very exciting thing to do.” Nicole talked almost poetically of the Northwest Indiana woodlands as they appeared in times long ago, when early settlers described the open vis- tas of the woods, filled with wildflowers like orchids and asters. Sometimes they are still found around the edges of woodlands where they have been pushed out by the overshadowing non-native shrubs. (And did you know that there are more orchid species in Indiana that in Hawaii? That northwest Indiana has a bio-diver- sity of plant life that makes it unique in all the world? Savannah blaz- ing star, a type of liatris, Nicole Kalkbrenner provides a variety of colors in bloom. Earth Day Continued from Page 1 “We first take a look and assess the natural resources available,” Nicole said. “If you look at what the land was historically, using old plats, aerial surveys, you can incorporate that into what you are restoring. At Tryon Farms we were working with incorporating a human community of living within the natural resources there. For instance, there were miles of drainage tiles that made the land usable for crops, but Not a “forb”, destroyed the natural flow of ground water, so we lift- but a grass ed them, getting the land back its original form. It’s that could like putting the pieces of a puzzle together, discovering spread to what this land wants to be instead of what it’s being make a lawn. forced to be. The easiest way is to not force land to be just what we might think is pretty, but let it be what it naturally wants to be. People try to put turf grass on pure sand, and it takes so much energy and expense and that’s not what the land wants to be.” Nicole brought some plants from her firm’s nursery to show some alternates to formal plantings for beach area land- scapes. June Grass, was one, a lush, dark green, spiky grass that looked ornamental even in its pot. White wild indigo with starry white blooms in the dunes. April 19, 2001 Page 3 Homeowners can take a look at the aspect of their house, Nicole continues, and take a look at what you Open ‘til 7 p.m. are going to plant around it. A step might be to ask, Evenings “If I were out in a natural area, what typically would grow in this habitat? What plants would like this mois- ture, soil and setting? Yews, for instance, are not native to sandy areas. Prickly pear cactus is. June Grass is. Ornamental grasses are, and ferns, along with cone wwwElegant.littlehousef Apparelashions.com for the flowers and violets, wild ginger and trillium. To help [email protected] Fashion Conscious Woman Women’s Apparel people plant naturally — “to let the land be what it wants to be — the Indiana Native Plant and Wildflower Society, INPAWS, is establishing a new chapter in north- It’s A Spring west Indiana, and has a quarterly newsletter. Website, www.inpaws.org, offers more information; Jan Hunter, Mix & Match 1/2 Price Sale 219/772-0934 is listed as a contact for the North West chapter. Buy one at Regular Price…Get 2nd at Half Price (Of equal or lesser value) Thursday, INPAWS member Barbara Plampin, trustee of the Shirley Heinze Environmental Fund and Save theDunes Council writes about April 26th endangered plants in the dunes: Golden SECRETARY’S Saxifrage, Chrysospieniu DAY m americanum, new sites have at Roskoes turned up. Modeling - Special Gift Bristly Certificates Sarsaparilla, Twin Flower, Aralia hispida, Awarded Linnea borealis still surviving in americana, now open spots of just a part of Black Oak history. Savanna. Bring your Secretary on Joining Nicole at the speaker’s table will be Lynn Waters, executive director of the LaPorte Solid Waste District, talking about recycling, what our efforts s a endlet produce and where recycled goods are available. It’ P Educator David Yeager of the Purdue Coop Extension, will give the basics of composting for local gardeners. Bill Bolton’s Beachside Garden Center at Hwy 12 and Tent Sale BARGAINS Moore Road will provide materials for the flower planting ceremony that will follow, accompanied by Elsa Littman and her music. A special feature will be Meet Us For Lunch And A Style Show a display of art by local children inspired by envi- THURSDAY, APRIL 19 - ROSKOE’S, LA PORTE ronmental themes. Many people have been involved in our local Earth Day celebration, but I’ll give a WEDNESDAY. APRIL 25 - TIPPECANOE PLACE, SOUTH BEND nod to beachers Eden Lysaught and Kathleen Zmuda 409 Alexander Street LaPorte, IN 326-8602 On Hwy 35 - 5 Blocks South of Lincolnway who gave me the background details. Turn Right on Alexander Monday - Friday 9:30 to 7 Saturday 9:30 to 5 Earth Day Continued on Page 4 Page 4 April 19, 2001 Earth Day Continued from Page 3 Around the world people are honoring Earth Day 2001 in their special ways: a Perth Earth Day Expo Earth Day 2001 at the library begins at 1 PM with and Expedition White Cliffs in Australia; Minato a viewing of “The Sweep of Time”, a view of human- Clean Beach Dive in Okinawa, Japan; Don’t Mess with ity’s past and potential future by Barbara Marx Taiwan Cleanup; Our Earth, Our Future in Ghana; Hubbard, who Buckminster Fuller acknowledges as Solar Energy for Earth Day 2001 in Nigeria, among the most informed futurist of our time. Exciting and those listed on the Internet. In the USA, the coasts inspirational, she talks about humankind’s evolu- are covered from Monterey Bay Earth Week in tion to this place in time when a growing global con- California; Americorps Earth Day River Cleanup in sciousness creates its own energy of transformation. Rochester, Minnesota; Earth Day Sunrise in Palo She credits Teilhard de Chardin for inspiration of a Alto and Earth Day Puget Sound in Seattle. .and, cosmic unifying force. .and somewhere in the back- in our own backyard, Earth Day 2001 in Michigan City, ground, John Lennon should be singing, “Imagine. April 21, 2001. .all the people. .growing together as one”. To end the program, Peter Russell echoes a look at the future in his film “The Global Brain”, a network of energy for change. Brief History of Earth Day In 1969, U.S. Senator Gaylord A. Nelson sug- gested that a day of environmental education be held on college campuses.

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