George Lucas Had It Wrong. A Day of Fierce Pride at Modesto Junior College Yesterday

I had conflicting responsibilities and to my regret had to miss my school's graduation ceremony yesterday. I know that many of my students had the honor of walking that stage, and I can only say: I am proud for all of you. So, about that title...this is something I wrote a few years ago about the special and talented people I serve as a teacher.

No, I'm not talking about the prequels to Star Wars! It was something much earlier. People could be forgiven for not knowing this, but Star Wars was not George Lucas's first successful film. He was known for another great movie, American Graffiti, a semi-autobiographical film that recalled his days as a young man in Modesto, California. Yes, Lucas is perhaps our most famous native son. He also attended Modesto Junior College for a time.

So what was it that he got wrong? It was a fairly minor plot point, but in the movie, the two friends Curt and Steve were on the same pathways for their lives. They were planning to leave town to attend a "northeastern" college (let's presume an Ivy League school), but after a series of events over the space of one long night, Steve is convinced to stay in Modesto, attending the "junior" college, while Curt heads off to great success, and was eventually a writer living in Canada. Steve ended up selling insurance in Modesto.

What's wrong with this picture? It was the insinuation that attending a community college was somehow a lesser option for achieving success, that it is in some way a second-rate education. As I sat proudly through our graduation ceremony tonight, I would fiercely argue that getting a degree at a community college is a wonderful achievement, and that I would proudly put my students up against any Ivy League student at the two-year mark in their academic career.

It doesn't take long to realize that a lot of (but certainly not all) the students at a Harvard or Yale are children of privilege, people who have never really had to struggle to get ahead in life. They started in private upscale schools, got in on the fast-track to an Ivy League school with the best preparation possible. It's hardly a surprise that they would excel and succeed.

The students I work with come from many different backgrounds, and most of them are poor and disadvantaged. They come from many cultures. Our elementary and secondary schools are underfunded and sometimes dangerous, and alcoholism and drug use are epidemic in our region. The kids in our schools have the decks stacked against them at every turn. They come to us unprepared and unskilled. We have veterans suffering from PTSD, abused spouses, and laid-off laborers. We have huge numbers of people who are the first in their families to ever attend college. We have resources at our school, but sometimes the challenges facing our students are overwhelming. And yet these students persist, and they fight, and they cry, and fail, and then they come back again. And in the end they master the skills required to pass their classes. When you see a group of these students decked out in blue robes, and receiving an AA or AS degree, you are looking at some of the most successful people in the world.

If you are an employer, and you see a community college on the resume of a potential employee, you are looking at a person with persistence, stamina, and an incredible work ethic. They've been through impossible challenges and they've succeeded.

I couldn't be more proud of my students on this great day.

Discover the Wonders of the Hawaiian Islands with Geotripper and Modesto Junior College -May 30-June 11, 2024!

Are you looking for a bit of adventure? 

I invite you to join our Modesto Junior College Anthropology 190/Geology 190: Field Studies in the Hawaiian Islands from May 30 to June 11, 2024. This once-in-a-lifetime journey spans nine days on the Big Island of Hawai'i and four days on Kaua'i. 

There is still time to join us for 13 days exploring volcanoes, coral reefs, tropical rainforests, tropical deserts, ancient foot trails, petroglyphs, and archaeological sites! Our itinerary includes Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Mauna Kea, Hilo, the archaeological parks of the Kona Coast, and on Kauai we'll visit Waimea Canyon (the "Grand Canyon of the Pacific") and the Na Pali Cliffs, and much, much more.

The total cost for lodging, transportation, and inter-island flight is $2,850. Students are required to make their way to Hawaii and arrange their own meals. 

Contact instructor Garry Hayes (that's me) (hayesg@yosemite.edu) for more information.

This is a Zero-Textbook-Cost Class. We are writing our own!

Links for the Informational Brochure, Registration form, and the Tentative Itinerary can be found at the bottom of my MJC Faculty Page at MJC People Finder: Garry Hayes. Although some deadlines mentioned in the brochures have passed, we still have room for several more travelers, and would love to have you join us!

Why I Always Have a Camera: Our Campus Gray Fox

There is a reason I have a camera every time I go walking. I might not see something interesting every time I head outside, but when something interesting appears, I want to have a camera handy. Today I almost broke my own rule. I'm usually looking for bird species, and the day was dismal and gray, poor conditions for getting any kind of decent pictures. But on a whim I changed my usual route, and went north to check out the second sheep compound.

I first saw it hidden partly behind a fence, and all I could see were some ears and a gray-colored body that reminded me of a Great Horned Owl. But when it didn't retreat, I could see that it was a Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus). I was thrilled! The Gray Fox is native to our region, and the more commonly seen Red Foxes are not. These may be the best pictures I've ever captured of the fox.

The Gray Fox is found all over North America, and has been part of the ecosystem for at least the last 3-4 million years. There are a large number of regional subspecies, and a closely related species, the Island Fox, found on the Channel Islands off the coast of the state. The development of agriculture in the Great Valley of Central California destroyed 95% of the original habitat for the foxes and the many other native species. Gray Foxes are adaptable, though, and have often done well in the vicinity of human habitations. There is a richness of rodents in the vicinity of our agricultural developments on campus that provide the foxes with a secure food supply. I've seen them on numerous occasions, but they rare stick around long enough for pictures. Today was a lucky day...

The Great Valley Museum Outdoor Nature Lab Stands De-fence-less!

Something special happened yesterday at Modesto Junior College and the Great Valley Museum. The Outdoor Nature Lab, which has been completely fenced off for most of the last year became "de-fenced". The construction process has not been finished, but the basic structures, the rocks, the plants, pathways, greenhouse, and irrigation/lighting are in place, and visitors are now able to wander through the newest addition to the Great Valley Museum.

The picture above is how the site looked in January shortly after the fencing went up. The field had been barren for three or four years after the construction of the Science Community Center. Some in the administration had wanted to plant the field with grass while we waited for the funding of the Outdoor Nature Lab to be approved, but the faculty and staff of the Center resisted. We were aware that it would make it easier for the funding to "disappear" if there was a nice grassy area. We chose to have a barren lot. The funding was precarious, as the lab was one of the final projects to be funded by our Measure E bond from a decade ago, and a cost over-run in other areas could have eliminated the project entirely.

The parade of constantly changing administration officials who had occupied their offices for only a few years sometimes had trouble understanding how important the Outdoor Nature Lab was to the museum and faculty at Modesto Junior College. It has been a dream for more than three decades that we would have a microcosm of the Great Valley natural environment adjacent to our facilities, with the native plants and characteristic rock types (as well as a greenhouse and demonstration gardens). Many of our students and visitors have barely ever traveled outside the city limits and are unaware of the incredible world that still exists in the corners and edges of our valley.

We were thrilled yesterday to find that along with the disappearance of the fencing that some of the natural environment was already arriving to occupy our small natural landscape. Killdeers were wandering over the site, and we suspect there might even be a nest nearby. The Killdeer is the mascot of the museum and center, appearing on our logos. It seemed a good omen, like a blessing.

Spring is still going on at the outdoor lab as well. There were delays with the planting so the worksite missed any kind of natural wildflower blooms back in March and April, but we have a great many newly-planted trees, and they will have to be irrigated until they can mature and put down an adequate root system. Natural wildflowers were also planted, and they are blooming right now.

Pathways wander throughout the lab, providing a serene place to walk or wait between classes, especially as the trees grow and mature. Interpretive signs will be installed soon that explain the identity of the plants and rocks, and the relationships that make up the Great Valley biome.

Part of my role in the design of the lab was the selection of rocks that we chose to represent the lower foothills of the Sierra Nevada. I was able to select somewhere around 30 tons of boulders that now crop out in the eastern part of the lab.

At the north end where visiting students will disembark from their school buses, we've placed boulders of the Table Mountain lava flow. It is a relatively rare rock called latite, but being black, and originally highly fluid, it can be thought of as a form of basalt. The lavas emerged from vents located today high in the Sierra Nevada near Sonora Pass (the Dardanelles) and flowed west for nearly 60 miles to the Knight's Ferry area. As the mountains later rose and tilted west, erosion removed the rocks from around the lava flow, but the lava flow resisted the forces of erosion and ended up as a ridge that retained the sinuous path of the ancestral Stanislaus River.

The boulders are covered by a veritable ecosystem of lichens and mosses. When I picked them out last October, they were drab and dried out. When the rains came the surface of the rock came alive with color. It's a marvelous place to see the weathering of rock and formation of soil happening right in front of your eyes. The lichens produce acids that slowly break down the rock into clay and nutrients.

At the south end where students will be walking into the museum, we've placed "tombstone rocks". These are some of the oldest rocks found in our region, metamorphic slate and phyllite that started out as mud and silt on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Plate motions carried these sediments into the subduction zone that once extended from Canada to Mexico. The sediments were scraped off the ocean crust and added to the edge of the continent. In the process, the mud and silt were subjected to intense heat and pressure, and they were tilted to a vertical position. Differential erosion removed the softer layers, leaving the harder slabs to stand out like a ill-kempt cemetery plot.

Other rocks on the "upper" trail include marble boulders, the host rocks for the Mother Lode's spectacular caverns. We also have a huge chunk of quartz, the host ore for the gold that was responsible for the most transformative events in the human history of California, the Gold Rush of 1848.

In a few months we expect to see a scaled-down model of a Saurolophus, the first dinosaur ever to be found in California, erected in the barren area on the lower left corner in the picture below. It was discovered by a teenager named Al Bennison in the 1930s right here in Stanislaus County, up in Del Puerto Canyon. Few of our children are ever taught about the rich paleontology of our valley and the many kinds of fascinating creatures that used to live here in the valley, including Mosasaurs, Plesiosaurs, Hadrosaurs, and in much younger rocks, Sabertooth Cats, Mammoths, Short-faced Bears, Giant Sloths, and Dire Wolves. To help their imaginations, we are installing a mock paleontology dig at the western end of the nature lab.

It's an exciting time for our faculty, staff, and volunteers. It's not complete, but for the first time we are able to wander about this wonderful little microcosm of the Great Valley. For some of us it has been a three-decade wait, but it's been worth the effort. A lot of people have worked very hard to make this unique educational experience a reality.

The Outdoor Nature Lab at the Great Valley Museum Takes Shape

For thirty years it was nothing more than a dream, something hoped-for, but never realized for lack of funds. Ten years ago it became a possibility when our country passed Measure E to redevelop the campus of Modesto Junior College. But there were many, many projects, more than the measure could pay for. But there was still enough of a dream that the faculty and museum staff requested that the vacant lot north of our Science Community Center not be developed in any way in hopes that the last of the Measure E funds might be utilized to construct the Great Valley Outdoor Nature Lab (some administrators wanted to put in grass along with irrigation and walkways; we knew if that happened, the lab would never come into being).

The decision was finally made a year or two ago. The last of the funds would be devoted to the Outdoor Lab! Then came the proposals and planning. Then the budget realities and deciding what parts had to be cut. And finally at the end of the summer the construction began.

There was the very fun business of selecting many tons of boulders and watching them get dropped into place. When I left for the holiday break there were only hummocks of dirt but when I returned this week the concrete walkways had been completed. With the boulders in place, the irrigation system could be installed and in the next three weeks or so an entire woodland of native vegetation will be planted.

The greenhouse is coming along, as are the two mock paleontology dig sites. We have hopes of adding a dinosaur to the landscape, a reasonable facsimile of an Augustynolophus Morrisi, the state dinosaur. The first dinosaur ever found in the state was discovered in our county (it was a Saurolophus of some sort, possibly an Augustynolophus). Interpretative signs are being designed.

Many of the children in our region are not able to visit the wild areas that remain in the Great Valley and adjacent Sierra Nevada Mother Lode. The Great Valley Outdoor Nature Lab will be a microcosm of the valley and foothill ecosystem, with native vegetation, native rock outcrops, and a vernal pool. It is our hope that the native birds, reptiles, and other animals will start making a home in our little microenvironment.

It is a marvelous feeling to see a decades-long dream coming at last to fruition. It's an exciting time for us! More updates to come...

How to Make a Rock Garden: Update on the Great Valley Outdoor Nature Lab

How to make a rock garden:

First, you have to find rock seeds. Try for variety, a mixture of igneous and metamorphic, maybe some sedimentary. Local rivers are good places to look. They're even shaped a little bit like eggs.

Then you have find a good place for your rock garden. Any vacant lot has potential, but some are better than others. I picked this one because it is right next to the Great Valley Museum at Modesto Junior College. If we can get a good rock garden going, it can enhance the mission of the museum and college by providing a microcosm of the geologic environment of our region.

Then you plant the rocks...after a few weeks you might notice that the ground is starting to ripple and develop bumps and hummocks. This is a natural progression as the rocks start to grow. But something is missing...

Ah! Water. For the rock garden to truly thrive, try adding lots of water. That will really get those rocks sprouting. And now we wait.

And we wait. You can even walk around the hummocks to see if any of the rocks are peeking though yet. But don't cheat and try to dig them out ahead of time. They might stop growing entirely.

Then comes that magic day when you arrive at work and find that the rocks have sprouted! They're huge!!

It's now safe to wander about a little, seeing what kind of rocks have germinated. I saw some tombstone rocks like those of the Mother Lode foothills, giant boulders of marble from the Calaveras Complex, and even a giant chunk of quartz, the ore-bearing rock of the Mother Lode gold veins. There were also some volcanic rocks from the Table Mountain Latite and the rhyolite tuff of the Valley Springs Formation. It's a great crop, which is good because no one is going to want to try moving these rocks once they've grown.

Finally you need the skilled rock farmers, who like bonsai tree tenders adjust the location of the boulders and plant some of them a little deeper so they won't fall over on anyone. And that's how you make a rock garden!

I understand that some of our botanists and biologists are intending to...um...plant plants on these beautiful rocks. I have mixed feelings about this, but they say it will enhance the education of the children who visit the museum every bit as much as the rocks will. I guess time will tell.

Things are happening pretty quickly now. Once the rocks are in place, the pathways will be put in and the planting will commence. It is actually just a few short months before our Great Valley Natural Outdoor Lab will be a reality. It's kind of interesting to compare the reality of the moment with a sketch I made during one of the early planning meetings:

Wait a Minute...What Happened to the Rocks I Picked Out?

Something kind of extraordinary happened on campus this week. I was pausing between classes and saw a large truck and a crane downstairs in the staging area for the Great Valley Outdoor Nature Lab. The crane was dumping gigantic rocks onto the ground. "My" rock collection had arrived!! You might remember that early last month I went 'rock collecting' in the Sierra Nevada foothills for the rocks that will be part of the displays and landscaping of the outdoor. All 60 tons or so...

Source: https://media.giphy.com/media/12ScDYWbP4yoBq/giphy.gif

My response about their arrival on campus was predictable...

But if you remember the scene in "Elf" when Buddy thought Santa was in the store only to discover he was a fake, well, I had that moment too. I saw that something was off about the rocks I had selected. Something was different about them. Below was the rock that I selected a month ago, when it was 85 degrees out, and rain had not fallen in months...

And here (below) is the rock they claim I picked out. This after nearly two weeks of rain and cooler temperatures. This rock is clearly on a PALLET of LIES!

Well, okay, maybe it isn't on a pallet like the others, and maybe it is the same rock I picked out. But you can now see one of the main reasons I picked it, and why it will be sitting in a position of honor by the entrance sign to the outdoor nature lab. Not only is it a unique rock that is found in our region (the latite of Table Mountain), it is also a miniature ecosystem of mosses, lichens, grass, and other organisms. To see it, just add water!

In any case, we now have an astounding variety of the rocks that are found in our region. There is marble from the Calaveras Complex, the host rock of the many caverns that are found in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

There is a gigantic chunk of the quartz from the Mother Lode veins, the source of the gold that played such a huge (and devastating) part in the history of California. Sorry, no visible gold (although I'll keep looking).

One of the most striking rocks are the "tombstone rocks" of the Foothills Terrane, large fins of slate and phyllite that were once mud and silt on the ocean floor. The rocks were crushed against the western edge of North America, metamorphosed, and tilted vertically. We'll be putting them in the ground in the same vertical orientation. It will be a dramatic sight at the southern entrance to the lab.

The next step comes at the end of the week. I'll get to help direct the placement of the rocks! I'll try not to be insufferably picky..."Could you rotate that one about four inches? Great! Wait...I liked it better the way it was...". An update will follow.

Fall Finally Arrives, California Style

I would never try to compare our fall season with the hardwood forests of New England and the Appalachians, or even with the aspen groves of Colorado or Utah. But there are a few benefits to experiencing fall here in California.

For one thing, our fall lasts for a couple of months, and our trees are at the height of their color at a time when the trees back east are barren of leaves, and winter-style snows are lashing the landscape. It was 68 degrees out yesterday (though we had a day of light frost last week).

I walked the Tuolumne Parkway Trail this morning after a week on the road, and the changes were pretty obvious. The willows and wild grapes were changing.

There are also some mature cottonwood trees that have been various shades of yellow for weeks now.

But we also have some brilliant colors in the city as well. I had errands in town and took a few shots of the Modesto neighborhoods where Modesto Ash was planted many years ago.

There are other ornamental trees on our west campus that are relatively young, and they turned almost fluorescent over the holiday weekend.

So yes, I would never presume to say our fall show of color can compare to the wild displays back east, but I certainly enjoy having a few weeks to appreciate the changes that are happening here right now.

There is a lot of horror going on right now in so many places. I'll be back to trying to right the wrongs soon, but for a few moments today I took a few breaths of blessedly clean air (the Camp Fire is out, thank heavens) and enjoyed the technicolor show.