Welcome to Monitor Notes, a weekly roundup of news items, event announcements, and updates on past Bay Area Monitor articles.
Bay Area Monitor Updates
As you may have heard, the Bay Area Monitor is moving online. While we’ll miss the print magazine, it’s also an opportunity to publish more frequently and build a more robust conversation between the League of Women Voters, Bay Area regulation agencies, and Bay Area Monitor readers. Look for new articles (and a redesigned home page) to begin appearing on our website the first week of August. In the meantime, you can check out our new logo on Twitter and Facebook, and follow there for more updates as we transition. Thanks for reading!
Drive Clean California
With summer winding on and California facing likely another historic fire season, it’s as prescient as ever to remind drivers of the benefits of electric vehicles. To this end, the League of Women Voters of California has partnered up with DriveClean to sponsor a tell-a-friend campaign, “Drive Clean with the League,” to raise awareness and gin up interest in going electric. One hour online events are scheduled for the evenings of July 10th and 14th and will feature experts on EVs and ebikes sharing their experiences, debunk some common EV myths, and provide solutions for residents in apartments and disadvantaged communities. California residents who attend will receive priority placement for DriveClean’s EV Discount Program. Sign up here, and tell your friends.
Summer Reading
If you’re like me, maybe reading a book in a public place is about all the in-person activity your atrophied social skills can handle after 18 months of isolation. Fortunately, the League of Women Voters of Oakland and of Los Altos-Mountain View Area are hosting some book clubs next week. On July 15th, Oakland will host a discussion of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger by Rebecca Traister. On July 17th, Los Altos-Mountain View will talk voting rights with Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Ari Berman. If you can’t make the discussions, or maybe you can’t just drop everything and read two new books in a week, consider adding them to your summer reading list.
Tracking Wildlife
If you’ve seen the video of the dynamic coyote and badger duo traveling through a culvert together, you might be interested in hearing from the researchers responsible for capturing the footage (If you haven’t, run, don’t walk, to a place you can watch this YouTube video immediately). Tanya Diamond and Ahiga Sandoval of Pathways for Wildlife are conducting the second part of their Wildlife Tracking workshop on July 9th. The workshop, hosted by the Pensinsula Open Space Trust, the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, and the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority, will teach participants how to identify signs of local species more challenging to track and share some of their studies of wildlife movement in the region.
Plastic-Free Future
Although we’re already a week in, it’s not too late to join Berkeley’s Ecology Center’s call for a Plastic-Free July. As part of an international effort to reduce plastic that began in Western Australia, 2021 marks the Ecology Center’s fourth year encouraging people to live plasticless lives for one month. All throughout July, they will be hosting online events like chemical free garden management, a hands-on beeswax workshop, and a policy roadmap to a plastic-free future.
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