Member Committee Contacts

 Tim Kask, timkask@yahoo.com

Carol Castro carollbcastro@hotmail.com  510-352-2382

Search This Site

Membership

Manny Lindner is a native of Chicago. As a youngster, his deep fascination with local forest preserves and with the summers spent at boy-scout camp made an indelible impression on him. By age 15 he became proficient at identification of birds of the Midwest. He was educated at Northwestern University with a major in chemistry, and as a chemist he worked on the Manhattan Project at both Oak Ridge in Tennessee, and at Richland in Washington State. It was this last move that made him a confirmed “Westerner”, who would never again live east of the Rocky Mountains. Following World War II, he went to graduate school at UC Berkeley, where he received his Ph.D. in the field of nuclear chemistry. After teaching chemistry for three years at Washington State College he returned to the Bay Area. He spent the rest of his career in nuclear chemistry research at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, retiring in 1988. But his love of the natural world never left him, and when he and his family settled in Danville in 1951, the surrounding countryside was an irresistible attraction, beginning with the Las Trampas hills west of his home. For many years, every spring on April 20, he would make it a point to hike in Morgan Territory, photographing the wildflower displays. He still manages to indulge himself in these activities, although on a much reduced scale.
Manny continues his story: During the 1960’s and 1970’s, a strong environmental awareness gripped the nation, and our local area was no exception. In the early sixties, Al and Mary Burton founded the Contra Costa Park and Recreation Council (CCPRC), a citizen activist group that hoped to save some of the county’s unspoiled lands for posterity. Although I was unaware of CCPRC at that time, as a resident of Danville I spent many hours hiking in the Las Trampas hills to the west, and was convinced that those hills were of unspoiled beauty that merited preservation. Fortunately, I was able to contact William Penn Mott, who was then general manager of the EB Regional Park District. He informed me that the Burton group was also interested in the same project, and suggested I join forces with them, which I did. It was about 1965. Our strategy in the CCPRC was manifold. We organized a series of weekend springtime hikes for the public, which became very popular (see photo). We testified before the Board of Supervisors and before the Board of Directors of the EB Park District. We also spoke before any local groups willing to listen to us, and included a photo slide presentation of views of the land and of endemic flora. These activities extended over several years, so the name Las Trampas gradually gained familiarity in the county. Persistence was the answer to that. There were many moments of elation and disappointment, but ultimately the EBRPD Board approved establishment of Las Trampas Regional Wilderness, and the first purchase of 450 acres was made in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s. Over the years, many more additions were made. Today, the park area encompasses 5200 acres and extends from the southern boundary of Lafayette to San Ramon. The staging area at the north end of Bollinger Canyon Road has a series of helpful display panels that describe the geology, plant communities, wildlife and trails within the park. The story of Morgan Territory followed a different course. About the time that Las Trampas was established, the CCPRC was aware of this remote area of Contra Costa County. Although the land was exceptionally beautiful and had great displays of goldfields in spring, there appeared to be no great threat from developers because of its remote location, so we made no effort to promote a park in Morgan Territory; it seemed safe. Or so we thought. In early 1972 a proposal was submitted to the Planning Commission of Contra Costa County to rezone 830 acres of land to establish a Planned Unit Development (PUD) along Morgan Territory road two miles from its junction with Marsh Creek Road. For us, the alarm had sounded. We used our experience with Las Trampas (testimony before official bodies, weekend public hikes, slide presentations) as a guide. Although the hikes were well received, the development was approved by the Commission. However, a re-hearing was scheduled based on new facts, and the decision was reversed. A final denial by the Board of Supervisors, and the PUD proposal was dead. Eventually, the Directors of the EBRPD approved purchase of 970 acres of (Smith) property, and the Regional Preserve was officially established in 1975. Today, the preserve is over five thousand acres, not including hundreds of acres of contiguous lands purchased by Save Mount Diablo and by the state park system. At an altitude of 2000 feet, much of the land is relatively flat and easily accessible, a fact almost unique in Contra Costa County. Manny Lindner

Manny is hard to pick out but Las Trampas grasslands stretch as far as the eye can see.

We have three upcoming events for which we need volunteer assistance. Our chapter attends a number of local conservation related happenings and tries to attract new members by presenting our mission to the public. Either all day or part of the day.

April    
    Sunol-Ohlone Regional Wilderness
    Sunol Spring Wildflower Festival
    April 14, 2012, 11:00 to 4:00

    John Muir National Historic Site, Martinez
    John Muir Birthday Celebration
    April 21, 2012, 10:00 to 4:00

June
    Borges Ranch/Shell Ridge Open Space, Walnut Creek
    Heritage Day Event
    June 16, 2012, 11:00 to 4:00

We are interested in members who wish to share their experience and interest in native plants and habitat. Please contact me if you are willing to contribute a brief story about yourself.

Tim Kask  timkask@yahoo.com or 510-552-6168

Announcement
Still looking for join dates prior to 1986
•    Outreach Coordinator position still vacant
•    Restoration Chair, vacant
•    Be sure and visit our updated membership page at
      http://ebcnps.org/index.php/membership/

Welcome Tim Kask, new Membership Chair
(photo by Elaine Jackson taken at Native Here Nursery)

I am pleased to be taking on responsibility as the new Membership Committee Chair. I have lived in California my entire life, and in the Oakland-Bay area for nearly 20 years with my wife Joan. Being a member of the East Bay Chapter of the California Native Plant Society (EBCNPS) since the fall of 1999, I’ve noticed over the years that most administrative roles in the Chapter are carried out by a fairly small number of individuals, so I decided to see if I could help out. EBCNPS is a great and active organization, certainly worth giving a bit more of my time to. I have not been active previously, outside of participating in the Adopt-a-Rare Plant effort with Heath Bartosh. I have volunteered for many years with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and found that to be very interesting and rewarding. I expect working with EBCNPS to be equally rewarding.

I have been studying California plants for over ten years now and feel like I am finally starting to scratch the surface. Like many I started with picture books, soon grew frustrated with that approach, so invested in a Jepson Manual. I can now consider myself a collector of Northern California floras. I have many from different regions of this end of the state. I’ve taken many of the workshops offered by Friends of the Jepson Herbarium, and learned a great deal from them. I’ve taken classes at Merritt College with Glenn Keator and others. The best education is to go out in the field and look at lots of plants, which I do every chance I have.

Much of my botanizing is done in the East Bay Parks, which are an incredible resource, as is Mount Diablo State Park. These are my favorite local areas, and I spend a great deal of my time hiking in our local parks. I have been working with the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Santa Cruz County establishing plant lists for some of the newer small refuge properties near Watsonville. I was fortunate to find a new population of a CNPS 1B.2 listed plant, Centromadia parryi ssp. congdonii, near Harkin’s Slough in 2008. This taxon was considered extirpated in the county, and hadn’t been collected since 1909. One of the rewards of volunteering with the Fish and Wildlife Service is the chance to work on the Farallon Islands four times over the last several years, including some vegetation surveys on the islands. My wife and I have a cabin near Lassen Volcanic National Park, and I am very interested in the Lassen area flora. I worked as a park ranger with the Plant Ecologist for two summers, doing plant related activities. I have searched out many of the rare or locally rare plants in that region. I have also done volunteer work of various plant and wildlife activities with Lassen Park for a number of years.

I look forward to getting to know many more members, and working with the other committee and board members.

Tim Kask
 
Please join us in welcoming our new members for October, November, and December: Leslie Bartholic, Mack Casterman, Michal Crawford-Zimring, Laurie Liguori, and Eric Smith.
As always, a huge thank you to our renewing members.

Announcement
Let us all give a big welcome to our new Membership Chair, Tim Kask
timkask@yahoo.com

Still looking for join dates prior to 1986
Outreach Coordinator position still vacant
Restoration Chair, vacant
Be sure and visit our updated membership page at http://ebcnps.org/index.php/membership/

Elaine Jackson

Meet Alma Toroian Raymond

Photo by Sophie Braccini, Staff Writer, Lamorinda Weekly. Alma’s garden was on the 2011 Bringing Back the Natives Garden tour and featured in the Lamorinda paper.

My earliest interest in California native plants came about when I was a biology major at UC Berkeley in the early 1960s. I made many trips to the UC garden and also to the Regional Parks Botanic Garden. Those places were peaceful and calming refuges from the hectic Berkeley campus. The CNPS office was in a small building in the EBRPBG in those days, but the meetings were held in Berkeley near campus. I remember attending a few CNPS meetings in a dark Maybeck building and seeing G. Ledyard Stebbins there.

 Berkeley was in quite an uproar during the late years of the ‘60s. It became increasingly difficult for me to concentrate on my studies. Friends were being drafted into the US Army and going off to Vietnam. Of course there was the famous protest taking place in Sproul Plaza. At some point I left Berkeley with a note from the Dean of Women stating that I had left in good standing and could return to resume my studies. I went back to Selma, my hometown, and enrolled at Fresno State. That was where I had my most influential experience with California native plants under the tutelage of Dr. John Weiler.
 
I took Dr. Weiler’s taxonomy of flowering plants class at Fresno State College. He led a field trip every week. We followed the Spring bloom as it moved to higher elevations culminating in the High Sierra. This is when I learned the plant families, how to key species, collect and preserve specimens and how to keep records of everything we collected. I still have my plant collection and notes somewhere in my house. I was born and grew up in the Central Valley, but was not aware that such natural botanical beauty was nearby until I took that class with Dr. Weiler.
 
I married Douglas William Raymond, a Berkeley engineer, in 1965. In 1967 we threw up our hands in the face of increasing street protests and joined the Peace Corps. Doug was not drafted due to a vision problem in one eye. It seemed like everyone our age was being drafted or running to Canada to avoid the draft. We joined the Peace Corps and went to teach in Ethiopia for two years.
 
We started a family after our return from Ethiopia and moved from Berkeley to Orinda in 1978 with our young daughter and son. I retired recently from many years of working in the field of neurosciences as a lab assistant and later a lab manager at Berkeley, UCSF, Stanford and Genentech.
 
After retirement I renewed my interest in native plants. I noticed that there were tours, classes to take and native plant nurseries. So I had a go at converting my yard. It has been several years now. My front garden was on the Bringing Back the Natives tour last year. Things are constantly changing in the garden and I love the serenity of working out there.

I still go to the botanic garden in Tilden Park on a regular basis as a member of the Seedy Friends volunteers. I have other interests such as ukulele playing, singing with the UC Alumni Chorus, helping with our grandchildren and corresponding by email with former students from our Peace Corps days.
 
So far, life has been good to us. Can’t ask for more.

Alma Raymond

Please join us in welcoming our new members who joined in November and December: Brian Anacker, Fred Booker, Darrell Boyle, Margery Erikson, Lisa Gorrell, Shellie Jacobson, Dan Johnson, Teresa Noble, Cassie Ohms, Krehe Ritter, & Jane VanSusteren.

As always, a huge thank you to our renewing members.

Reminders
Still looking for join dates prior to 1986
Outreach Coordinator position still vacant
Restoration Chair, vacant
Be sure and visit our updated membership page at http://ebcnps.org/index.php/membership

Elaine Jackson

Greg Wolford and Shirley McPheeters working at the October 2008 Plant Fair.  Photo
by Delia Barnes-Taylor

Greg Wolford passed away last month after a long fight against lymphoma. Many of us had the pleasure of working with Greg be it a weeding, pull it out project, or a planting, put it in project. Here are a few remembrances from his friends.
I think of him so often because of the work he did here in my garden, he and Kevin kidding around and so pleased with making something together.
Shirley McPheeters

I didn’t know Greg well, but here’s what I remember very clearly about him.  He had the kind of face that registered everything that he felt--he was unguarded in that way--so he expressed his feelings readily.  I had to get used to the fact that sometimes he would frown when he first heard something, but then I realized that that was his way of concentrating and taking everything in. Then he’d respond.  He had huge integrity and sensitivity.  He loved the earth. He has simply gone too soon.
Laura Baker

Greg Wolford was one of those rare artists who knew our natural world intimately and could use its forms, colors and textures to shape gardens that made us all see its subtle beauty and appreciate its ever changing form and character. As a landscape architect and resource manager for John Muir National Historic Site, I had the lucky opportunity to work with Greg as he designed and implemented a garden that greets visitors to the Muir home with the California native plants that John Muir and Greg loved so much. It was an honor and a pleasure to have worked with Greg. He will be missed.
Lucy Lawliss
Superintendent
George Washington Birthplace National Monument

In 2007 Greg was hired by NPS Lucy Lawliss to design and plant a California Native Garden at the John Muir Historic Site Visitor’s Center in Martinez.  Greg designed it with his heart and soul. Now several years later Keith Parks, NPS Horticulturist, and volunteers are in the process of refreshing the garden. The new plantings will be planted in Greg’s memory.
Elaine Jackson

I am very sorry that Greg has lost his fight. I joined Greg on a few restoration outings and we hired him to help us out in our home garden.  He was a lovely person, so loyal to his little dog, and always pure of heart.
Delia Barnes-Taylor

We the Friends of Alhambra Creek have also become Friends of Greg Wolford as we worked together to build the native plant garden at the John Muir National Historic Site.  Greg’s dedication, his generosity, his quiet good humor and his unrelenting hard work are an inspiration to all of us.  The Garden he built with us is Greg’s beautiful legacy to the community and to all who come to visit John Muir’s home.  No doubt, Greg and John are finding themselves as Kindred and Related Spirits in the world beyond this one.

Each time we plant a Native, or pull a weed in Greg’s Garden we will be reminded of this kind and generous man who gave us this marvelous gift, and in touching the plants and the soil, we will be in touch with his spirit.
Greg departed from us too soon, but his spirit will be with us always.
Igor and Shirley Skaredoff

Peace and love to you Greg, from all of us.
____________________________________________________

Please join us in welcoming our new members for August, September time frame; Tanner Harris, Thomas Carns, Laura Kukulski, Robert Garnaas, Karl Ruddy, Sallie Pine, Morgan Ramirez, Shari Gent, Evelyn Wenk, Dayna Yocum, Melissa Grush, Myra Delzeit, & Carolyn Price.
As always, a huge thank you to our renewing members.
Announcement
The Membership Chair position will soon be vacant. If you are looking for a fun, fulfilling, self-directed volunteer opportunity, this position is for you. Email of call me for more information elainejx@att.net 925-372-0687
Reminders
Still looking for join dates prior to 1986
Outreach Coordinator position still vacant
Restoration Chair, vacant
Be sure and visit our updated membership page at http://ebcnps.org/index.php/membership/

Elaine Jackson

Meet John Rusk. John is a longtime member who was an active volunteer at the Plant Fair when it was at Merritt College. Now his activities are focused on the Regional Parks Botanic Garden, including serving as registrar of their education program. They are one of the few local organizations (along with the Jepson Herbarium and the CNPS) that provide serious botanical educational opportunities for Bay Area adults.

(John’s wife, Michiko Rusk took photo)

I feel a bit of a fraud writing this piece for it has been several years since I was active in the East Bay chapter.

I joined CNPS around 1990 when it became apparent that I needed to learn more about those little green things I was photographing. I attended nearly every membership meeting. I went on hikes about once a month. I participated in field trips up and down California. I pored over Munz, then Jepson 2 and the Flora of North America, even reading the front matter of those tomes. Slowly, I learned.

I also read the Bay Leaf. In those days, each Bay Leaf had an invitation to join Shirley McPheeters and Roy West propagating plants for the annual CNPS plant sale, which was then held at Merritt College. As my (paid) work life slowed down, I found that I had time on my hands. I knew two things. First, if I didn’t force myself to participate in outside activities I would become a recluse. Secondly, I, like so many men, found myself underfoot as my wife went about her tasks.

One Tuesday morning in 1996 (I think), I drove to Merritt College to volunteer. That first day I learned that propagation was largely a matter of taking plants out of little pots and putting them into bigger pots. Thursday of that week, I started volunteering at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden as well.

Shirley was patient with me. She never called me an idiot but she did point out that I was making the same mistakes week after week. I improved and her corrections came fewer and farther between. She began teaching me the nuances. Certain cuttings had to be handled with care for their roots were tender; other plants needed their roots teased out as they were transferred to larger pots. And above all: “Don’t bury the crown!”

What surprised me was that I, who always had difficulty forming friendships, formed some of the deepest attachments of my life: Shirley, of course, and Roy, who has gone on to bigger things, but also the two Lees—the talented artist Lee McCaffree and dear Lee Hartman. I hesitate to list names because I will leave somebody out. There’s also Marguerite Harrell, Linda Newton, and the woman who convinced me to write this piece, Elaine Jackson. There’s Barbara, Liz, Sandy, Caroline, Toni, Ed, and more. I meet with many of them a couple of times each year.

The plant sale at Merritt came to an end, as all things must. The plant sale lives on in a different form at the Native Plant Fair held at our East Bay Chapter’s Native Here nursery in Tilden. And that is good.

But the end of the plant sale at Merritt College led me to increase my volunteer participation at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden. Not only do I still help propagating plants (increasing infirmities have led me to assume more of a graybeard role), but I also became the registrar for the Friends of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden classes. I have lately assumed editorship of a new enewsletter promoting the garden (feel free to subscribe at www.nativeplants.org).

I will end by saying that I love plants--and plantpeople, almost as much. Volunteer! You’ll be doing nice things for plants among nice people.

John Rusk

Please join us in welcoming our new members for April/May time frame Beth Christian, Patricia Durell, Christopher Gurney, Susan Hodges, Terry Johnson, Brian Kerss, Christopher Kroll, David Litty, Camille Nowell, Carolyn O’Connell, Patricia Overshiner, Sylvia Rose, Jody Steffen-Campbell, Hilary Twitchell, Diane Vervoort, & Charlene Wisman

As always, a huge thank you to our renewing members

Opportunity to meet and greet the public for CNPS

Volunteer to help our Plant Fair 2011 October 1^st and 2nd

Reminders

• Still looking for join dates prior to 1986
• Outreach Coordinator position still vacant
• Restoration Chair, vacant
• Be sure and visit our updated membership page at http://ebcnps.org/index.php/membership/

 

Elaine Jackson

elainejx@att.net  925-372-0687