The amazing primatologist, naturalist and conservationist Jane Goodall turns 82 years old on April 3. To celebrate that, we created an interactive quiz about her life. Don't worry if you don't know all the answers—you'll learn a lot and have fun trying! Just click on the quiz below.
Come to Our Thursday Night Talk: Saving the Chimpanzee
Don't forget that (in can't you read the small type on the poster above) we are hosting a fascinating talk by Dr. Lilian Pintea of the Jane Goodall Institute this Thursday evening at 7 at the College of the Atlantic's Gates Auditorium in Bar Harbor.
Please come! Lilian will talk about how he and his colleagues at the Jane Goodall Institute are using new technology to map, study and protect highly endangered chimpanzees in Africa. He will also talk about his experiences working with Jane herself.
We have a full slate of fun, creative activities scheduled at our shop/exploratorium starting at 10 a.m. on Thursday, which we have declared Jane Goodall Day at The Naturalist's Notebook. Learn about chimpanzees, create puppets, do art, hear a lunch-time reading, write a message to send to Jane—all of that and more!
Where else but the Notebook can you play games that help you learn about chimpanzees?
Send a Message to Jane
As I just mentioned, we're encouraging you to share with us any thoughts, memories or experiences related to Jane Goodall or any of her books or projects. Did she ever inspire you? Send us a message that we can ask Lilian to pass along to her.
Below is an email we received from our friend Kimber, a conservationist who has worked with rhinos and done other important work:
"I have a handwritten letter from [Jane] that she sent after I wrote to her (years ago when I was finishing up my BA in Anthropology) about my disappointment in not being able to see her in Austin where she had a speaking engagement because it was sold out. I couldn’t believe that she would take the time to write to me, with all of the lecturing and work she was doing! Years later she came to San Antonio for a speaking engagement and after standing in line for many hours, I was given the “Golden Ticket” so that I could go see her. It was so wonderful to hear her speak and then to have the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to actually meet her face to face. She is truly a very special person who really believes in what she is doing to try and help the chimpanzees – she’s amazing."
Among the Jane Goodall- and chimpanzee-related titles we have for sale is Me...Jane, a fabulous illustrated book by one of my former Sports Illustrated colleagues, artist/author Patrick McDonnell, who also draws the wonderful dog-themed comic strip Mutts.
Call us crazy (you won't be the first), but Pamelia and I held our fourth annual Lobster Independence Day festivities on Monday night at our house. Each year, to show appreciation for our favorite crustacean, we release two large female lobsters that've we've bought at a local pound. We talk with our guests about the life cycle of lobsters (and how older females produce far more eggs than younger ones), we make up lobster poems and songs, and sometimes we attach extra meaning to the two freed lobsters. This year we named them Pam and Paula for the late mothers of Pamelia and our friend Kathy.
The "Green Thing" and the Greatest Generation Our friend Kimber also forwarded us one of those funny emails that make the rounds. This one involves senior citizens, taking care of the environment, and a bit of perspective. It's pretty good:
In the line at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized to her and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.” The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment.”
She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day. Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.
We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.
Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that old lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.
Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.
Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.
We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.
Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint. But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?
That's all for now—it's time to head over to the Notebook for this week's Earth News kid-reporter program...