“Kids need the comfort of nature, they need to become
reacquainted with the rhythm. That’s what we’re all longing
for. We’re like a run-on sentence. There’s no end. We need
an end of a day, to follow the sun down. We need the end
of a season and the starting of a new one – that rebirth
makes our lives comprehensible.”
-Alice Waters
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| Class at Interim Solar Calendar | Cesar’s “Fast For Life” against pesticides, 1988 |
A primary focus of our design and educational effort is around environmental justice and ecological sustainability. It ties together a core consciousness of Berkeley with the environmental activism of Cesar Chavez. These learnings will help broaden our awareness of one of the simple wonders of our existence, the rhythm of the seasons — combining science and art in the search for new ways of seeing the world.
The open-air memorial site at Chavez Park in Berkeley will “house” several integrated art/science museum-like exhibits. Prototype versions of these exhibits have been in stalled at the Interim Solar Calendar. And the educational program will consist of four major components:
reasons for the seasons
Science was born in astronomy thousands of years ago at a time when culture and nature were more intimately interconnected. The Maya, Aztec and Inca were all dedicated observers of the apparent movement of objects in the sky. They reached a sophisticated level of knowledge, which has still not filtered down to the average citizen today. In fact over a decade of research on preconceptions in astronomy demonstrates that children and adults today hold profoundly incorrect ideas about the sun-earth-moon system. Here is a basic overview of how the tilt of the earth creates our seasons.
…read more of Reasons of the Seasons
ECOLOGY OF PLACE AND SEASON
At the core of the Rhythm of the Seasons educational effort is the question of “how do things connect with one another in nature and culture?” That question resonates with the many who believe that an emerging ecological consciousness will replace the consumption-oriented & unsustainable material age that dominates our planet today. César Chávez was such a person, a man devoted to the rights of farmworkers who were doing some of the most backbreaking and environmentally hazardous work on the planet. In our educational effort we intend to utilize the park (a former landfill and dump) as a mini-laboratory to understand how the diverse wildlife at the park can serve as a barometer of the health of the landscape as well as a lesson in the ecology of waste.
… read more of Ecology of Place and Season
Culture & Season
As the earth makes its 365 journey around the sun, cultures all over the world celebrate key moments in that cycle — the equinoxes and solstices. Dig deep into this and you will find that the origins of the major traditional global celebrations in the world today are rooted in the seasonal cycles of agriculture — their origins largely disguised today by more contemporary religious and market purposes. They take us back to a time when the potential scarcity of food, clothing and shelter was a first order priority, and serve as a window into how and what a culture thinks is important. Understanding and appreciating these celebrations will form part of our cross-cultural educational effort.
… read Winter Celebrations
Archeoastronomy and Calendar
The founder of the Chavez Memorial Solar Calendar has travelled to many parts of the world to study over 30 separate ancient archeological sites that house sky calendars. Thanks to archaeoastronomers, we are now beginning to discover and unravel how they work. And we are using these findings in our educational effort to better understand the diverse cultural and scientific means the ancients used for structuring time by the movements of the sun, moon, stars, planets and seasonal changes of nature. Hand in hand with this is how sky calendars took on architectural and sculptural form, which added to the artistic expression of their respective cultures. We will utilize these in our design and educational effort. Here is one example:
…Chankillo, Perú