FastForward | May - June 2021

FastForward Vol. 30 #9 May-June 2021

‘City’ ‘City’ Cameron Taylor Cameron Senior, Marin Taylor, Catholic Senior Marin Catholic High School

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CONTENTS

MAY/JUNE 2021

For our cover story, we interviewed Coyote Peterson, wildlife expert, YouTube creator, filmmaker and more. Coyote inspired us with his vast knowledge of animals and their instincts and behaviors. We also interviewed Lil Milagro Henriquez, an inspirational youth leader from The Mycelium Network. Her organziation prepares students of color to address environmental racism and issues relating to climate crisis. Lil encourages us to think about the root causes of climate change and suggests projects and actions to heal and help create a cleaner, sustainable world. We talked with ABC News weatherman Mike Nicco and learned so many cool facts about predicting weather and how climate change is affecting it.

LEARN, EXPAND...

P. 4

COYOTE PETERSON— WILDLIFE EXPERT, YOUTUBE CREATOR

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THE MYCELIUM NETWORK— LIL MILAGRO HENRIQUEZ

P. 12 ART GALLERY P. 14 MIKE NICCO — A LOCAL WEATHERMAN SHARES P. 18 ARTIST SPOTLIGHT — CAMERON TAYLOR P. 20 OPINIONS- STOP THE HATE P. 22 ENVIRONMENTAL PAGE — CLIMATE CHANGE IS HAPPENING P. 25 ART PAGE — SAN RAFAEL HIGH SCHOOL P. 28 DRAKE HIGH SCHOOL — COMACAD COMMUNICATIONS

202 1 P HO T O GR A P H Y

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PUBLISHER: Winifred MacLeod winifred@fastforwardweb.com 415-272-3569 775 E.Blithedale Ave #388 Mill Valley, CA 94941 Published by KidSpeak, Inc., Vol 30 #9 www.fastforwardweb.com EDITORS: Zadie Winthrop (High School) + Emerson Swift (Middle School) CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Minna Hibbitts, Jackie Chin, Maya Donalds, Eliza Gould, Zadie Winthrop, Lily Leone, Semira Robinson, Jacob TaichmanBernstein, Alice Leiden, Lillith Levine-Prime, Caroline Yelverton, Aggie Robinson, Bea Revitch, William CiFuentes, Jefferson Garcia CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS: Cameron Taylor, Melanie Sontay, Caroline DeLeon, Tobe Ohajunwa, Naomi Kessinger, Tika Win, Luke Osborn, May Ling Roberts, Ava Shawn, Christina Murdick, Georgia Wilson and Rai Jobe.

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VOL. 30, NO. 4 | MARCH-APRIL 2021

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WIN!FastForward Photography Contest

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Terra Marin School

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Film Production in the Drama Program The students at Terra Marin School are working hard on a film project that includes writing, producing, and starring in their own original short films. Students are at the helm and responsible for the entire process, making decisions around all aspects of the production including script development, casting, music score, sound effects and editing. This creative project will culminate in the exciting socially distanced outdoor Terra Marin Film Festival in the Spring.

“This film project is great because we get to be creative and explore all aspects of movie making. It’s all on us – we are solely responsible for the outcome and I love that!

— Bea Revitch, William CiFuentes and Jefferson Garcia

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COYOTE PETERSON WRITERS/REPORTERS: Maya Donalds, Eliza Gould, Semira Robinson, Alice Leiden, Jacob Taichman-Weitzman, Aggie Robinson, Emerson Swift, Caroline Yelverton SCHOOLS: Mount Tamalpais School, Marin Horizon, Mill Valley Middle School, San Rafael High School, Phillips Academy, Saint Hilary School and Tamalpais High School

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A D V E N T U R E

We interviewed Coyote Peterson, a wildlife expert, filmmaker, YouTube creator, TV personality and more — beginning by asking him to describe himself. We took in all of the cool animal artifacts, paintings and posters on his wall and knew instantly he was very much like us— a big kid.

He opened up by saying, “I would say I’m goofy.

Considering I’m 39 years old, most people still look at me as like a 12-year-old kid for the most part. I’m like a perpetual child. I’m fearless — I’ll throw myself into 10-foot-deep of water to catch crazy reptiles. I’m also incredibly driven from a business perspective. One thing many people don’t know is, I’m much more involved behind the scenes than somebody who’s typically in front of the camera. I never wanted to be a person who was in front of the camera. I wanted to be a business leader, a visionary, a film producer, director, somebody that was making the entire vision happen. I’m a very driven person when it comes to wanting to make Brave Wilderness a success.

Q: Where did you get the name Coyote?

My birth name is Nathaniel. The nickname Coyote was given to me by my mom when I was about eight years old. At that time, Warner Brothers cartoons were very popular. There was a show named Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, and the Coyote was always chasing the Roadrunner trying to catch it. When I was younger, we used to travel out to Arizona and Road Runners are really good at catching and eating lizards. I would actually follow the Road Runners around hoping that they would lead me to lizards.My mom started calling me Coyote like the Warner Brothers cartoon because I was always chasing the Roadrunners around. Eventually, that nickname kind of caught wind with my neighborhood friends.

And for a long time, it was “the Coyote.” And then when we started developing the shows, it became “Coyote.”

Q: Why do you enjoy getting close to dangerous animals?

After I graduated from college, I combined my love of filmmaking with the world of animals and asked myself, ‘how do I bring both of these things together to start making content?’ I eventually landed on distributing content on YouTube, and it kind of took off from there. I’ve always been super passionate about animals and wanting to share their world with the human world. I think there’s a lot of things that people are afraid of, especially within the natural world. We try our best to help people get over those fears of things. Even though it seems as if I do some pretty crazy stuff every now and again, we feel that by getting people up close with animals through the art of cinematography, we are helping them overcome a lot of their fears.

Q: What was one of your most exciting adventures?

We do a lot of pre-production work before we actually head out into the field, whether that’s researching species, and other potential environmental hazards, or just really knowing about one

specifically targeted animal. This is probably one of the most exciting elements — getting yourself ready to go out into the wild and potentially have that encounter.

One exciting trip we took was to Texas. We had a very big production trip and filmed alligator snapping turtles, alligator gars. We filmed the cicada killer episode that came out recently that was really, really popular.

Q: What is one of your most vivid memories from growing up?

When I was between eight and 10 years old, I caught my first big common snapping turtle, one that I was sort of stalking and trying to catch all summer long. When I finally caught it, this turtle weighed about half of what I weighed. It was a forty-plus pound turtle, and for a little eight-year-old kid to catch a gargantuan reptile of that magnitude at that age for me made me realize anything is possible. Where I live in Columbus, Ohio, I do a lot of research on the common snapping turtle populations that live here at our local metro-parks. One of my hobbies every spring, even if I’m not filming is to go out and check on the population of turtles. I catch them, I make sure that they’re in good health, I collect biometric data, and basically make sure that the population is thriving, and that everybody’s made it through their winter of hibernation.

Q: When did you decide you wanted to make this your career?

When I got out of college in 2010, I really started recognizing that there was a lack of animal adventure content in the media. There was a very popular show on Discovery channel called Man vs Wild with Bear Grylls.

But Bear’s career is very different. He was teaching people how to survive in the wild, which involves killing and eating animals. We looked at that design and said, “Well, we definitely don’t want to be killing and eating animals. How do we bring back the style of what Steve Irwin and Jeff Corwin had produced?” They were certainly very inspirational to me. And we decided we need to create this type of animal content for the next generation. The good thing that we found is that people of all generations, from age four to 104, seem to enjoy brave wilderness content. We’re very thankful for that.

Q: What inspired the stung by/bit by collection of videos?

First, to be an animal presenter, you actually have to be really good at not being bitten or stung by things.

So, it’s pretty ironic that we found by me intentionally getting bitten and stung by insects and animals, that it was going to be insanely popular. This came about because we did a video about a porcupine that we filmed in Montana. The episode was never supposed to be about me getting quilled by the porcupine. This was a porcupine that had been rescued and was being raised in captivity; we brought it out into a natural looking setting. We’re going to set it up. I was just going to talk about some facts about this animal. The handlers that were helping us work with the porcupine took it out of its little carrying case. They had these crazy leather gloves that like came up to their elbows. I thought ‘where’s my gloves? I don’t have any gloves.’ I was supposed to be interacting with the porcupine. They started telling me about the quills and how most people don’t understand how quills work or even the proper way to remove them from their pet if their pet gets too FASTFORWARD

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”

Even though it seems as if I do some pretty crazy stuff every now and then, we feel that by getting people up close with animals through the art of cinematography, we are helping them overcome a lot of their fears.

”

— Coyote Peterson

close to a porcupine. We’re thinking this is really interesting. I asked them, ‘Could we show people what to do by letting me get close to the porcupine?’ They said, ‘Knock yourself out. You want to get quilled by a porcupine, go for it.’ It was that video that set all in motion — experimenting with these seemingly worst-case scenarios of getting bitten or stung or coiled or pinched by a number of different animal species.

Q: How does fear factor into the job?

One of the big goals with Brave Wilderness is to help people overcome some of their fears. I say that there’s the three big S’s: Sharks, Snakes and Spiders. Those are probably the things that people are most afraid of in the animal kingdom. But those are three things that really want nothing to do with humans.

In almost every instance, where there is a human or an animal interaction with one of those species, it comes from being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or a case of mistaken identity.

A shark might think that a human is a prey item, because a human is swimming on something like a surfboard in the ocean. If you’re going to go on the ocean, you’re going to enter the realm of a predator like a shark, you’re willingly putting yourself on the potential dinner table. If you’re going to take those risks, you have to be aware of the outcome that could possibly come from it. So, for Brave Wilderness, it’s definitely about helping people overcome their fears of different creatures. For me, when it comes to being afraid of getting bitten or stung by something intentionally, it takes a lot to build up your courage to actually go through it. It’s such a reward to be able to share these stories about these animals with the audience. Because if people get entertainment, enjoyment and most importantly, the education in what it is, then I feel like we’re doing a good job.

Q: Your experience being stung by the Cicada Killer could have been fatal; how do you ensure that doesn’t happen in future scenarios?

We do a lot of research ahead of time. There are very few instances where people have had an allergic reaction to a sting from something like a Bullet Ant or a Tarantula Hawk or have ever died from it. In a worst-case scenario, if I were to ever go into anaphylactic shock, you’ll always notice in our sting episodes, we have something called an epinephrine pen, where if I had a negative reaction, we could boost me full of the epinephrine essentially. This would give me enough time to get to a medical 6 FASTFORWARD MAY-JUNE

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establishment, and I would probably be just fine. Another thing that we always have is medical personnel on standby. In an absolute worst, worst case scenario, we have an insurance plan and a satellite phone with a red button on it that if you press it, a life-flight helicopter will literally show up as fast as they can get one out there. So, we take a lot of precautions when it comes to putting my life on the line for some of these human guinea pig experiments.

Q: How do you use your platform to raise conservation awareness?

Currently we’re in the process of doing a huge fundraiser for animals in South Africa, specifically a Game Reserve called Kariega Game Reserve where the most famous Rhino in the world, Tandy lives. Tandy was a victim of poaching many years ago, and she managed to survive. But it’s a sensitive subject to walk that line of animal cruelty or poaching, especially with our younger audience. So, it is something that we’re going to start navigating into more as the brand grows.

We looked at it as our place to bring people education about animals, show them what exists in the natural world, make slight mentions of some of these political driven initiatives, but to let the audience sort of make that choice for themselves how they would get involved.

Q: What do you look forward to with the show?

The fun thing about producing content for Brave Wilderness, and certainly being able to release it in the digital world — YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram and all these wonderful platforms is that there’s always another adventure to be had. With animals specifically, there are so many countless species. What’s exciting for us is that there’s always another animal story that we could tell. And even if we’ve told an animal story once, you can always go back and tell it again in a different way. And that might be because technology is advanced...We’re having some things in development right now surrounding video games and virtual reality, which is a completely crazy new futuristic direction to be taking content. We want to be on the forefront of creating that animal adventure content so that when you put on your Oculus system, or your Google Glass, Brave Wilderness is the brand you’re experiencing. And if it’s something beyond an adventure that we’re looking forward to, it’s business developments within the world of entertainment.

I N T O

Q: Have you or your teammates experienced any near- death experiences with animals?

“There was a pretty close call with a mother grizzly bear and her three cubs on the side of a river in Alaska, where a mother bear was upwind and upriver, which means that she couldn’t hear or smell us. She and her three cubs were coming straight at me and one of my cinematographers. The bear got within 75 yards. A grizzly bear can cover the distance of 75 yards in a matter of seconds. We had to get her attention by waving our arms and screaming ‘Yo, Bear, Yo, Bear, we’re right here. Don’t come any closer bear!’”

T H E W I L D

And she stood up on her back legs and stared us down. Nothing is scarier than seeing a mother grizzly bear in that moment where she’s going to either decide that she’s going to attack and take out the potential threat to her cubs, or she’s going to take the cubs and go in the opposite direction. Fortunately for us, she took the cubs and went in the opposite direction. So, it made for a really cool story. But it was definitely a very scary heart racing moment.”

— Coyote Peterson, Host of Animal Planet’s series “Coyote Peterson: Brave the Wild”

THE WORD:

MICROAGRESSION: Microaggressions can be a statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority. They occurr casually, frequently and often —without any harm intended.

Thus, our major task is to make the invisible visible.

Below are five things that we need to do individually.

1. Learn from constant vigilance of our biases and fears.

2.) Experiencial reality is important in interacting with people who differ from us in terms of race, culture, ethnicity.

3.) Don’t be defensive.

4.) Be open to discussing your attitudes and biases and how they have hurt others.

5.) Be an ally and stand personally against all forms of bias and discrimination.

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The Marin County Free Library’s Mission is to provide welcoming, equitable and inclusive opportunitie for all to connect, learn and explore A core strategy to achieve our Mission is providing resources and information that will help our community learn about and more deeply engage in racial equity.

For more info, Visit: marinlibrary.or

es e.

rg.

MYCELIUM YOUTH NETWORK Preparing youth of color to address environmental racism and the climate crisis An Interview with Lil Milagro Henriquez WRITER: Zadie Winthrop Sophomore, Urban School of San Francisco

L il

Milagro Henriquez was working at a community school in Oakland during the 2017 Tubbs fires.

She watched students coming out of classrooms with nosebleeds and headaches. What struck her was that the teachers just kept teaching as normal. “People thought after this fire is gone, things are going to get back to normal,” she said.

But Henriquez never felt this way. Everything she had read about climate change told her there is no normal, and we aren’t going back.

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, she had left a few years before hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Although she, her mom and brother had left, her aunt, cousins, uncle and her dad were still there. She watched the news and was horrified by everything that was happening and that people in the community weren’t being helped. She remembered seeing people holding up signs, asking for help. Henriquez told us, “I had this thought— that when push comes to shove with climate change issues, the government is not going to save poor people of color. And it was a deep-seated realization.

And that was really shocking to me.”

Henriquez began to question if education today was sufficiently preparing kids for their future. She found herself asking, “if the point of education is actually to prepare young people to be able to live rich, meaningful lives and be global citizens of the world, wouldn’t it be important for people to be prepared for what’s happening?”

This contemplation bore the Mycelium Youth Network. Mycelium is an organization that teaches students from 3rd to 12th grade how to be climate resilient and adapt to a climatechallenged future. The organization prioritizes frontline Black and Brown youth but has programming throughout the Bay Area. Their lessons exist at the intersection of science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) and ancestral practices.

To Henriquez, it is key that students see their ancestral practices as a key part of the fight against climate change. “It’s really important to connect, particularly Black and Brown students, with their ancestral roots of how our people had been living pre-colonization, a largely regenerative, sustainable relationship to the land,” she said.

Henriquez sees that many proposed solutions to climate change are exclusively scientific. But, if that same thinking got us into this mess, she wonders, why we are so confident it will pull us out. Instead, she believes, “unless we combine that with a different way of being in relationship with our plant relatives, with our animal relatives, and with each other, then we’re just going to continue to create a band-aid solution to climate change.”

As she explained it, “it’s not just like, ‘here’s how you build a larger wall to help combat sea level rise if climate change is Continued on Page 10

THE TERM:

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE:

Environmental Justice refers to those cultural norms and values, rules, regulations, behaviors, policies, and decisions to support sustainability, where all people can hold with confidence that their community and natural environment is safe and productive.

- GREENACTION for Health & Environmental Justice, www.greenaction.org

PRINCIPLES: - affirms the need for urban and rural ecological policies to clean up and rebuild our cities and rural areas in balance with nature, honoring the cultural integrity of all our communities, and provided fair access for all to the full range of resources.

- calls for the education of present and future generations which emphasizes social and environmental issues, based on our experience and an appreciation of our diverse cultural perspectives.

- National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), www.nrdc.org

“We, as youth, have to fix what generations before us have ruined and to do what we must do, we need to be educated. ” ~ Sana, Age 12 Mycelium Youth Network

The Marin County Free Library’s Mission is to provide welcoming, equitable and inclusive opportunities for all to connect, learn and explore.

A core strategy to achieve our Mission is providing resources and information that will help our community learn about and more deeply engage in racial equity.

For more info, Visit: marinlibrary.org.

coming.’” Rather, she asks that people “the ecosystems of the shoreline as a whole. I want people to fundamentally understand that water is life.”

“It’s about eco-mapping your hood, being able to figure out and pinpoint what are the issues that are going to affect your community, and then starting to prepare for climate adaptation here,” said Henriquez. To get kids ready to understand how climate change will impact them and their neighborhoods, Mycelium teaches them how to make a DIY air purifier that purifies air at the same level as a high-quality, expensive one. They walk with students through their neighborhoods to learn to identify medicinal and edible plants, teaching them how to then take those plants and create tinctures or salves or create medicinal first aid kits. They show kids how to build water catchment systems and even solar panels, showing them how to connect those solar panels to used car batteries as a portable source of power. They are teaching kids how to build out their schools or homes as resilience hubs, learning about how to do carbon sequestration.

Henriquez says, “If people do it, we can start really pulling carbon from the atmosphere and safely storing it into Earth using our plant relatives.”

Mycelium also teaches them to read National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data. Another part of the t raining is to teach kids how to use deep breathing as a grounding practice.

Henriquez continues, “It could be learning songs from different plants, sung in traditional languages. We ask: How do we use ancestral traditions and practices to gain a deeper relationship to the world around us?

It can also mean sitting and talking to one another and creating a safe open space for young people to come together to talk about things that they’re afraid of. It doesn’t always have to look like a Next Generation Science Standards lesson. It can be fun. One thing that we’re excited about is the ability to game-ify climate change through something like Dungeons and Dragons game. Youth will create a character and walk through an environmental justice adventure and figure out how we want to solve it. Our goal is to create a rich, holistic, and fun way to prepare youth for climate change.”

Race is currently the largest factor in determining whether one will live 10

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near a polluted site. In prioritizing Black and Brown youth, Mycelium hopes to target those who may not otherwise have the financial resources to prepare for a climate-challenged future and to provide support to those already experiencing the effects of environmental racism.

solutions are scientific. If the same thinking got us into the mess that we are in, what is going to be able to pull us out? A lot of science solutions are incredibly important and necessary, we need to know them. But unless we combine that with a different way of being in relationship with our plant

“In our current educational systems, we’re not addressing root causes of what creates climate change. We’re not addressing late-stage capitalism. We’re not addressing massive exploitation and deforestation.”

Henriquez added, “Our job is two parts — one is we prioritize Black and Brown youth. We prioritize doing our education for free for communities that might not have the financial resources to be able to afford it. In East Oakland, where I live, there is a large highway that releases a significant amount of pollution. We know that the communities we’re talking with — Black and Brown students — are already being impacted by environmental racism. Climate change is already impacting people as we see high levels of asthma as well as people not having access to a grocery store within close range of their homes. These are factors that are a direct result of environmental racism. Most people know they’ve already experienced some form of lead in their water. The pollutants in the soil is something people have already experienced. We do our best to have a conversation asking, ‘why is that?’ Why are we seeing that the single greatest factor, deciding if you’re going to be living near close to or near a polluted site is your race?

We talk about that as a reality with us, and then we talk about what we can do. And here’s three or four active things that we can do to address X, Y, or Z issues. Here’s how we can get prepared. Let’s begin by learning how to purify your own water. And so, youth are becoming more aware of their environment. They know there’s something off, not right. We’re giving them a container to be able to talk it through in a way that feels safe and meaningful.

Henriquez says, “I think that the way we currently set up STEAM education or STEAM thinking is as if our only

— Lil Milagro Henriquez relatives, with our animal relatives, with each other, with ourselves, then we’re just going to continue creating a band-aid solution to climate change.

What we need to do is start fundamentally rethinking the way we are in relationship with our larger world.

Then we can think about scientific solutions.

She continued, “In our current educational systems, we’re not addressing root causes of what creates climate change. We’re not addressing late-stage capitalism. We’re not addressing massive exploitation and deforestation. For myself and for the communities I serve, pulling in those ancestral traditions and practices is important. In reality, our communities did not create the factors that have now led to climate change. So, how do we pull from specific sustainable and regenerative practices in order to bolster up our current STEAM solutions? These are the solutions we need to think about.”

Throughout her life, Henriquez has found the world often views the traditions and practices of Black and Brown folks as a deficit or of something lesser than. Rather, at Mycelium, Henriquez and the team are asking, “how do we allow Black and Brown youth to see their own traditions and practices not as something less than, but as something that has important knowledge and wisdom inherent in it. As Black and Brown communities, we’ve inherited both our ancestral traumas but also our ancestral wisdom and resilience and that’s what we want youth to focus on.

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NATURE-INFUSED ACADEMICS

WILDERNESS SURVIVAL 101

(AGES 5-12)

(AGES 14-17)

Catch up or advance your skills. Hike in nature.

Learn academics with nature as your guide.

Learn to navigate, track animals and survive in the wilderness.

MANDARIN

EARTH DISCOVERY

(AGES 3-10)

(AGES 3-13)

Immerse yourself in another culture.

Broaden perspectives. Think critically.

Adventure though forests, hills and coastland.

Run, hike and roam.

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Art Gallery

Art students — from Branson, San Domenico, San Rafael & Tam High Schools

May Ling Roberts, Senior, Branson School

Caroline Deleon, Junior, Branson School

Melanie Sontay, Senior, San Rafael High School

PROUD TO SUPPORT ART

BY STUDENTS OF MARIN 24 Bellam Blvd. San Rafael, CA 94901 415 454-1983 www.bellamstorage.com 12

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Naomi Kessinger, Senior, Branson School

Tobe Ohajunwa, Senior, San Domenico School

Luke Osborn, Senior, Tamalpais High School

Tika Win, Junior, Branson School

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REPORTERS/WRITERS: Jacob Taichman-Bernstein, Maya Donalds, Alice Leiden, Lillith Levine-Prime, Emerson Swift, Semira Robinson, Caroline Yelverton Marin Horizon, Mill Valley Middle, Mount Tamalpais School, Phillips Academy Andover, San Rafael High, Tamalpais High Schools

over data and make a forecast. And then once I’ve made that forecast, I make those graphics that you see to help me tell the story of the forecast for today and over the next seven days.

Something always affects us in our life. It piques our curiosity, and if you can figure out a way to make a living and have someone pay you to do that, then that’s a good ride.

Q: How do you obtain weather information?

All the information I get is free to everybody. Our page at ABC News all links back to the National Weather Service, or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), or the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. I’ll look at it before I go to bed, so I won’t be caught cold in the morning trying to re-figure everything out. So it’s constantly going back and checking. It’s constantly knowing what’s going on.

Q: What made you come to the Bay Area?

MIKE NICCO METEOROLOGIST AND WEATHERMAN

Q:

What is it like to be a meteorologist?

A meteorologist is a scientist. You answer the question ‘Why? Why does this happen? How does it happen?’ And in the case of weather, when it’s disruptive, you want to figure out how you can forecast it better sooner to prepare people.

Whether it’s directly or indirectly, the weather affects everything we do. And if we didn’t have weather, we wouldn’t have crops, we wouldn’t have food, we wouldn’t have the staples that we need to live. I was actually an introvert growing up.

So I had to come out of my shell and become a little more extroverted to be on TV, but it’s fun. And it’s nice knowing that so many people are watching and relying on your information.

Q: What is your daily schedule?

I get up about 2:45 in the morning, I come right down to this seat after I get ready at about 3:15. And I sit here and I look

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There are nuances everywhere: we’ve got our micro climates, we’ve got our sea breeze, we’ve got our fog, we’ve got so many things that go on. People don’t realize this and I have to point out to them that the weather’s not the same every day as people like to joke around here. So in that respect, that’s been a challenge in learning the weather out here versus everywhere else. That was a fun challenge I wanted to take on.

Q: How does climate change affect weather patterns?

The biggest thing we’re seeing right now is the droughts. Our rain season is almost 80 days shorter than it was just a decade ago. That means our spring is starting sooner, and our fall is ending later. So we’re relying on water that falls in a very narrow timeframe, or the snow up in the Sierra that melts and fills our reservoirs and eventually, filters its way down to us.

We’re almost in the worst drought category. That’s because it didn’t rain much last year. The drought is the biggest issue that is going to change our lives. And you can see that where I live: I live in the East Bay valleys, and they’re building faster than the infrastructure can keep up. So eventually, where’s

the water going to come from? And what’s going to happen if that water dries up, which it’s doing right now. We’re eventually going to get hotter, we’re getting drier. And that’s going to make electric bills go up. San Francisco hit 100 degrees a couple of times last year, this has not happened before. I mean, that’s a perfect example of climate change.

supercomputer, we’re able to create these forecast models that are made off of these algorithms, these math problems that are so ginormous that a human couldn’t do them. It takes days, and it takes a supercomputer three or four hours to do.

Q: What happened when our skies turned orange?

The hardest part now is disseminating bad information from good information. Depending on the weather situation, I have to know which forecast model I think is going to handle that weather situation better. And so continuing education, keeping up with the latest trends and being aware of what’s going on, and how things are changing in the academic world, that will affect how I’m doing and how I’m forecasting.

The only light that was coming through was red, orange and yellow. And that’s why the sky turned the color it did. So the ash in the sky was reflecting all the other colors back.

Q: Do you worry about global warming?

I’m worried because we’re not going to have enough natural resources for all the building we’re doing. I’m worried about

“

Q: What is the hardest part of forecasting?

Q: What is a moment on the job that sticks with you?

When I was six-years-old, I was at a piano lesson after school with my teacher at her house.

We’re doing our thing and all of a sudden the tornado sirens go off. When they go off, they send a shiver down your spine and gets your anxiety going because you know there’s possibly destruction and mayhem and other things coming. We ran to the basement which is what you should do — get down on the lowest floor and the most interior room. She opened the windows in the basement. You could hear this loud roar coming at us. As the winds were picking up, the curtains flew off the window. It was a loud noxious sound for about 30 seconds to a minute.

My ears popped because of the pressure change. You could hear the house shaking. When everything had calmed down, we walked outside. She lived on a cul-de-sac and her house had barely any damage. I looked over across the street and the house to the right was almost destroyed. That was the first time I’m thought, ‘Wow. Why did that happen? How did that happen?’ This experience sparked a curiosity that influenced me tremendously.”

— Mike Nicco, Meteorologist, ABC News

animals becoming extinct. I worry because we’re burning the rain forest at such a rate that it’s not only polluting the air. The rain forests are like the lungs of the earth, there’s so much vegetation and trees down there, they clean out more of the carbon dioxide in the air than any other part of the earth, and we’re burning and cutting them. And if we start to lose that ice at the North Pole which we’re losing, we’re losing air conditioning.

And that’s why we’re heating right now. The more of that ice we lose, the faster the earth is going to heat.

All my lawn equipment is battery operated, because some of the biggest polluting machines out there are lawn equipment. Little things like that we all can do eventually will add up.

Q: How does the technology affect your forecasting?

We’ve got sensors on ships that cross the ocean, we’ve got sensors on planes now as they fly through the atmosphere, and they can take observational readings for us. So for us, it’s all about gathering as much good data as we can, because we’re only as good as the data we can gather. With the advent of the

When I lived in Arkansas for a while...We had tornadoes one night and it was crazy. I was listening to the scanners...and a storm spotter came on and said, ‘we’ve got debris in the air.’ I knew immediately that there was a tornado, because it was picking things up off the ground and destroying them...

We got on the air, we had radar down at street level showing where it was going to go and when it was going to get there.

And sure enough, a grandmother was watching TV with her granddaughter. She grabbed her granddaughter off the couch in the TV room and ran for shelter. And she said not more than 30 seconds later, this big old oak tree came slamming through the roof, landed on that couch and probably would have killed both of them. Those are the kind of forecasts that I really take pride in when something potentially life threatening is going to happen.

Q: Is there ever pressure to forecast?

That’s called job security. You know, if the weather was the same every day, why would you need to tune in and watch?

And it’s crazy weather that usually sparks most of us to move into this line of occupation.

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17

Spotlight

PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST

CELEBRATING YOUTH ARTISTS

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City

Q: Six words that describe you?

Creative, Adventurous, Empathetic, Hard Working, Dedicated, and Likeable.

Q: What does art mean to you?

Art is an outlet for me to be able to express myself. It gives me a different realm to focus on rather than the stresses of daily life. Through photography, I have been able to create images that I extremely proud of.

Q: What kind of art do you create?

I create images using Photography, as well as an array of editing software, that allows me to express exactly what I want to in each and every photo.

Q: How much time do you spend doing art?

I would say an average shoot for me lasts 1-2 hours, depending on if I got the shot I wanted. In my photo ‘Streak’ of the Golden Gate Bridge (featured on next page, top right) I made my friends wait an extra 50 minutes as the shot wasn’t exactly what I wanted it to be. After the shoot, I probably spend either just as much time or even more editing those photos from the shoot.

Q: Who inspires you as an artist?

My main source of inspiration for photography comes from the photographers that I watch online, the main person being Hayden Pedersen, an Australian photographer whose style of photography is really inspiring to me.

CAMERON TAYLOR

Marin Catholic High School Grade 12 18 FASTFORWARD MAY-JUNE 2021

Q: How do you find inspiration for a piece?

There are a couple of different ways. Sometimes, I will drive around looking for potential shots that I can get. If I see something that I think could work, I make a note of it on a document and come back to get that shot later.

Sky of Fire

Other times, I will see a photo on social media and become inspired, and try to imitate it with my own unique twist. I will have an idea in my head of a shot that I want to get before I go out and take it.

Q: What do you hope people take away after seeing your art?

I hope that people come away inspired by my work. I try hard to make a visually appealing image and hope that is reflected in my art.

Streak Smoke

FASTFORWARD MAY-JUNE

2021

19

OPINION

Minna Hibbitts Marin Academy, 10th Grade Wuhan disease, Kung flu, the Chinese virus.

These monikers for COVID-19 coined by the former president are perhaps as insidious as the disease itself. When confronted about his use of these racist terms and their possible ramifications, Trump insisted that they wouldn’t bring negative attention to Asian Americans.

“It’s not racist at all. No, not at all. It comes from China, that’s why… I want to be accurate.” Those were his exact words.

But despite Trump’s unfounded claims that these phrases are harmless, reports of verbal and physical abuse against Asian Americans have soared since the start of the pandemic. In fact, more than 30% of Americans have witnessed someone blaming people of Asian descent for the coronavirus, according to an Ipsos survey conducted in late April

for the Center for Public Integrity. According to the NYPD, anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 1,900% in New York City in 2020.

1,900%.

Let that number sink in.

A 65-year-old Asian woman was beaten to the ground outside her apartment building in New York.

Katie Hou was attacked for carrying an anti-Asian-hate sign.

Yena Choe, a 16-year-old, was harassed for trying to film a video for the Korean-American Association.

There are a million more instances, more than I can fit on a single page, even ten. Stories like these have dominated local and national news headlines nearly every day for the past year.

Blatant racism. Acts of senseless violence.

“8 Asian American Women Dead in Atlanta Spa Shootings.”

“Fatal shooting of a 27-year-old Asian Woman in Compton.”

Some authorities have tried to claim there is no evidence that a number of these crimes were racially motivated. Is that what we’re really supposed to believe? Another Asian American harassed, abused, threatened. Another life taken., then another...

In an interview with Business Insider, John C. Yang, presi-

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dent and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice explained how, “[The] term [Wuhan virus] plays on a racist stereotype in itself and is being used to stigmatize a community regarding a medical issue that all of the world should be rallying around [solving].” The sentiment behind terms like this alienate vulnerable communities and put targets on the backs of innocent people. It divides us, fostering an environment of xenophobia and blatant racism. It’s no wonder that the horror we’ve seen unfold in recent months has come as a result of these characterizations.

This xenophobic attitude is especially dangerous in our current context as Asian Americans comprise a large percentage of essential workers in the healthcare and food services industries. Ironically, it’s the very people who have been risking their own lives to save ours, who are continually being portrayed as the perpetrators of this health crisis.

The prevalence of the inequity that is deeply embedded in our society has been brought into the spotlight recently, causing many to think that this is a new problem, when in reality this injustice has plagued us for centuries. When we see such acts of brutality in the news, we think to ourselves how terrible and unspeakable they are. These stories prompt social media storms, become the hot topic of family dinner discussions, remain at the forefront of our minds. Until, inevitably, new news surfaces, and once again these issues are buried under the mounds of other ones.

Stories untold. Lives erased.

We go on thinking it’s all over until the next incident occurs, and we are reminded of how little progress we’ve made, of the struggle minority groups face on a daily basis.

It’s our duty to not only acknowledge the injustices that a pandemic like this brings to light, but to actively fight back against them. It’s not good enough to sit back, to feel guilty and sorry and angry but remain complacent. We have a collective responsibility to hold our government accountable, to advocate for the millions of American citizens who have been victimized by policies and individuals alike.

The poisonous complex that we have normalized and become accustomed to is a disease as severe as the physical virus itself. It is highly infectious, merciless, and constantly mutating, so at times it is nearly impossible to identify. There is no simple remedy. No way to eliminate the residual effects or reverse the damage that has already been done, even if we do eventually find a cure. But it’s time to start working toward the solution rather than being part of the problem.

TRUTHS

A collection written by FastForward reporters

Love can be found in the darkest places.

People can surprise you in amazing ways.

No one knows everything.

Nobody is perfect.

We are all different.

Dawn will come no matter how tightly you grip the moments of the night.

Every day is a second chance to fix something or make it better.

Grudges don’t last forever.

Laughing is contagious.

It’s never too late to change.

Everyone is smart in their own way.

We are all unique.

No one can improve or change our lives better than we can ourselves.

You can’t help others if you don’t spend time getting to know yourself.

Pain brings us together.

Trust isn’t given, it’s earned.

A simple smile can change someone’s day.

We all feel every emotion at least once in our lives.

The only way to get better is to practice.

Our families love us regardless of what we look like, do or say.

Sometimes friends do things you don’t expect.

Everyone deserves to be treated kindly.

Even if sometimes you feel sad, you will be okay.

Sometimes, you can see a person’s emotion just by looking at them.

Lying won’t get you anywhere safe or beneficial.

Kindness is a role model within self.

Life is not always easy, there are challenges you must overcome.

True friends will tell you if you are wrong.

We learn from our mistakes.

There is always hope.

You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching TV. Saying world wide web is faster than www.

People can change.

Everyone has their own talents.

Actions speak louder than words.

If you can dream it, you can do it.

People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

The grass is always greener on the other side.

Yourself is the best version of you.

There is always hope.

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MAY-JUNE 2021

21

WILDFIRES...nature in balance

By Minna Hibbitts, Marin Academy, Sophomore

Ironically, wildfires, which have come to be associated with great destruction and devastation, in fact play an integral role in keeping balance in nature.

Wildfires are necessary to maintain and generate life: for example, some species like sequoias rely on fire to open their cones to release seeds, allowing new life to grow from the ashy ground.

Wildfires clear out “litter” on the forest floors, allowing nutrients to return to the soil and subsequently foster the growth of a healthy ecosystem. With the intensification of global warming and inferior forest management on our part, wildfires are wreaking havoc on ecosystems, which, in many cases, can’t recover. We have become much more accustomed to deadly wildfires in recent years, especially in California, where the magnitude of damage has been irreparable. It seems each year that the extent of the problem only grows.

A new breed of super-fires not only cause great damage to us when they spread to urban environments, but also drastically impact our ecosystems.

Ecologists conducted studies at 1,500 sites that had suffered 52 wildfires between 1998 and 2011 in the U.S. Rocky Mountains and found that these forests

had lost much of their ability to regenerate. Fires also release large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, accelerating climate change while also damaging the trees and plants that can absorb carbon. Each year, the wildfire season becomes longer, for climate change directly increases the risk and extent of wildfires. Between 1984 and 2015, the average number of fires per year doubled in the United States. The impacts of climate change: higher temperatures, drier conditions, and increased drought greatly heighten wildfire risk. Additionally, when wildfires begin burning now they are difficult to put out because of the warmer temperatures and dry kindling that fuel them. This is why we have come to view wildfires as so lethal and dangerous.

Although we can’t prevent wildfires altogether, there are a number of things we can do to ensure they don’t reach levels that are devastating to ecosystems. The paradox is that wildfires are necessary for environmental health, so we will need to burn our way out of

PROUD TO SUPPORT ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION..

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this disaster. Controlled wildfires are an integral part of forest management to prevent large-scale destruction. It’s important we take action now because wildfire conditions are out of control, consuming everything in their path as well as federal and state budgets. As global warming worsens, the threat of fires will inevitably grow and it is important to plan accordingly.

Preventive measures include discouraging development in high-fire danger zones, maintaining a safe environment around houses, and using our voices to speak out in support of proper forest maintenance. One of the most important steps we can all take is to reduce our carbon footprint as much as possible, so we don’t contribute to global warming and add fuel to the dangerous cycle that has turned up the heat on wildfires, threatening ancient ecosystems and uprooting thousands of lives.

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SPONSORING PARK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL GARDEN Each month Sloat Garden Center offers a $250 garden grant to a new Marin County school.

We rebuilt our garden at Park School. It consists of three areas - a teacher/learning area with tables for students, a growing, thematic bed area, with a pollinator bed, a spice bed and more and an orchard in back with fruit-bearing trees.

I like seeing the different flowers and fruits. I like that anyone can come into the garden to see the plants. There are stumps to sit on and paths to walk on. — Ferris Fadrhonc Kindergarten I like seeing the painted rocks that all the kids here painted.

One rock has a ladybug on it!— Ella Smith, Kindergarten I like eating strawberries and pomegranates in the garden.

— Milena Barker, Kindergarten I like opening the scarlet runner seed pods and taking the beans out. — Wyatt Burke, Kindergarten

L to R: Scarlett, Charlotte, Emily, Hudson & Eloise To learn more about our work with Bay Area school gardens, visit www.sloatgardens.com 24

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HIGH SCHOOL 1327/Sir Francis Drake High School ComAcad Communications Academy

Back, left to right: Zephyr Orr, Karim Al-Jamal, Simon Holt, Zoe Appleton, Dylan Ramirez, Gabe Marks, Kyle Nelson and Finn Wayland.

Front, l to r: Isabella Brisco-Schofield and Raina Bolaris.

The Communications Academy at Sir Francis Drake High School is a two-year academy for Juniors and Seniors, combining Audio/Video technology in a Digital Communications course with the topics, themes, and strategies of their English and Social Studies curriculum. Students work in production teams to create two to three projects a year, ranging along Political Advertisements, Original Shorts, A Showcase of Community Non-Profits, and Documentaries.

From script development to audio engineering, blue-screen recording to live-switch editing, our mantra keeps us going: Everybody Teaches; Everybody Learns.

Students say: “Comacad has helped me find friends and make me feel close with the groups I’ve been assigned to work with.

I care about the people in these communities and I always look forward to going to class.” — Reina Bolaris “Comacad is the one place where I can construct various costumes for mutants, thus destroying a garage with glue and latex saying, ‘ I did it for class. ‘“ — Zephyr Orr “I like the sense of community and the energy and vibes of the people in our classrooms everyday.” — Isabella Brisco-Schofield “ I love the community it creates and a very welcoming environment with unique people.” — Madie Butler “It’s pretty sick and also very epic! It’s totally cool.” — Erin Lee Comacad is a wonderful community. I’ve heard many say their high school experience is drifting around and being lost.

I felt like I found my people and know where I’m going. Plus Parish lets us watch “Ben 10.” — Karim Al-Jamal

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