events – Community for Lake Merritt

Rotary Nature Center Grand Re-opening

For a moment, this past Saturday, Feb 16th, 2019, it looked like it was going to be a miserable day. Volunteers had begun arriving to set up tables at 1130, and shortly after we’d gotten settled it began to pour with rain. We’d already had a good set of people stopping by, many people eager to have a look at the Center.

But the skies cleared, and people started arriving en mass. The Community for Lake Merritt board was out, helping dissect owl pellets, a game for looking at bird feet, looking at insects, and pollinators. Lake Merritt Observatory had an excellent “From the Bottom Up” table with things taken out of the lake, water testing, and someone helping interpret the new Mutual Air Bell (and air quality art project). Golden Gate Audubon was down by the water showing people the birds.

Inside, OPYRD Director Nicholas Williams started off the proceedings by unveiling a plaque in appreciation of the Core Team who have worked for the last year setting plans and policy into place. The group, which is disbanded as of the opening, has included Karis Griffin of OPRYD, Alan Briskin consultant, C.J. Hirschfield of Fairyland, James Robinson of the Lake Merritt Institute and community activist Jennie Girard. He went on to thank other groups who have contributed including Community for Lake Merritt which brought in the substantial donation which paid for the refurbishment, and the partner organizations.

Mayor Libby Schaaf then took the stage to thank everyone and honor Stephanie Benavides for her contributions to the RNC over the last 40 years. She shared her own childhood experiences at the RNC being mentored by Stephanie and shared the Patricia Polacco picture book, I Can Hear the Sun, written about Stephanie. Stephanie was also awarded a plaque to hang in the RNC and while local children held both ends she, together with the new lead naturalist, Angelina Manno, cut the ribbon officially reopening the RNC.

Photos are courtesy of John Kirkmire. More of his excellent photos are at LakeMerritt.org

Volunteer Cleanup Sat, Jan 5th

Katie Noonan will be leading an Adopt-A-Spot cleanup Saturday January 5th, 2019 from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m.

Volunteers needed. Please join, help cleanup before the Feb 16th Grand Opening.

Check out the new paint job on the building and you might get a chance to peek inside (if the windows in the garden are not papered over at least.)

Audubon RNC Winter/Spring Classes

Exciting news from Golden Gate Audubon, they will be offering three courses at the Rotary Nature Center starting in January on into the Spring. Courses include:

Introduction to the Wintering Birds of Lake Merritt
Bird as Icon in Nature & Culture: Black-Crowned Night Heron
Nature Journaling in the Heart of Oakland (Winter thru Spring)
Discover Nesting Colonial Water Birds in Oakland

More info can be found on the GGAS website.

Rotary Nature Center – opening soon!

Karis Griffin announced a grand opening celebration for the Rotary Nature Center this coming February 16th, 2019. A Saturday from 1-3:30pm.

Join us – RSVP here on Facebook to let us know you are coming. (If you don’t do Facebook — which I can understand — please put it in your calendar! )

Over the past year, the city has been working to clean the facility up — with the guidance of Karis and her “core team” Alan Briskin, C.J. Hirschfield, Jennie Gerard, and James Robinson. If you’ve been by the building recently, you’ll notice it has a fresh coat of paint. On the inside, they’ve also repainted, and are laying out new floors. They are also building an interior restroom, and a door out to the butterfly garden, among other things.

Community for Lake Merritt has been biding its time, and this past December our board met with the Core group (plus Nicholas Williams the head of OPRYD, and Ken Lupoff head of OPF), to discuss how our group help the Rotary Nature Center once it has opened.

We at Community for Lake Merritt are excited that the Nature Center will be soon open again and are committed to helping any way we can to help its success — as well as the programs announced in 2018. We are hoping to also help facilitate the involvement of a much larger community.

There’s still plenty of things to be done, and open questions, but it’s very exciting to be at the stage where the Nature Center will soon be open and functioning again.

Rotary Nature Center Meeting Report: June 2nd 2018

5 proposals were presented and discussed at the June 2nd meeting at the Lake Merritt Garden Center.

Barcode the Lake – Damon Tighe of California Center for Natural History

Birds Are Natural Ambassadors for Nature, Science, Art, & Community – Cindy Margulis of Golden Gate Audubon

Knowing Nature Thru Art – Jennifer Jastrab of Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants

Lake Merritt Observatory – Katie Noonan of Lake Merritt Institute (among other things!)

Exploring Urban Park Biodiversity – Donald Cooper (Eddie Dunbar presented at the meeting) of Insect Sciences Museum of California

The Core group is having follow up meetings with these groups & individuals to see what the next steps are. Karis Griffin indicated the Center would open sometime this summer, though no firm date was presented.

It was a little disappointing that we did not have the opportunity to present our own proposal due to a missed email.

Rotary Nature Center Update – June 1

From today’s update from OPRY&D tomorrow Saturday, June 2nd, we will hear five proposals for programs at the Rotary Nature Center.

June 2nd

9:00am – noon:30

Lakeside Park Garden Center

666 Bellevuey Ave

For each proposal, there will be about 10 minutes for a high level summary and 10 minutes for community questions and support. The five presentations will be the following:

Birds Are Natural Ambassadors for Nature, Science, Art, & Community –Cindy Margulis
Bar Code the Lake – Damon Tighe
Learning to Know Nature Through the Senses – Jennifer Jastrab
S.T.E.M. Projects for Youth at the Rotary Nature Center – Katie Noonan
Taking Wing – Donald Cooper

Earth Day Clean Up

April 21st, 2018, we organized a clean up crew through Adopt a Spot. About 12 of us over the course of 3 hours — members of Community for Lake Merritt, City Staff, the Rotary, and others — worked to clean up the grounds of the Rotary Nature Center — in particular the Bee Garden.

Some 30+ bags of garden waste later things were looking much better. There is still plenty of work to do, so we hope to organize more regular work on the grounds.

We also planted some Dutchman’s Pipevine as well to hopefully provide a good spot for wandering Pipevine Swallowtails.

Next meeting, Sat, Apr 7, 2018: 9am-noon

My App Timehop noted a sad anniversary today: that of the closing of the Rotary Nature Center last year.

We’re finally coming to some concrete steps moving forward to a new and reinvigorated Center.

Todays’s update form Karis Griffin of OPRYD, brought to light her committee to govern and guide this effort, a fine crew of Lake Merritt stalwarts: C.J. Hirschfield (E.D. of Fairyland and involved with Rotary Club and many other things), Jennie Gerard (a veteran of city hall, and founder of Weed Warriors, and Lake Merritt Advocates), James Robinson (E.D. of Lake Merritt Institute), and the aforementioned Alan Briskin (the facilitator hired by the city).

The next public meeting is set for Saturday, April 7th, 2018 from 9am to noon. This meeting will be held at Studio One, 365 45th Street, in the Temescal neighborhood of Oakland.

If you plan to attend, please RSVP to parksandrec@oaklandnet.com

The committee went together this past Thursday to the Berkeley Shorebird Park Nature Center, to visit a potential model for our Nature Center (well worth a visit if you have not been — they have a pretty amazing docent program too).

The agenda for this meeting is