Almanack Contributor Marsha Stanley

Marsha Stanley is a former reporter for the Rochester Times Union, where she covered government and did investigative reporting. She freelanced for many years for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, writing feature stories for the Sunday magazine. She holds a bachelor of journalism from the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

Marsha is a founding member and on the board of AdkAction.org.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Marsha Stanley: Give Monarchs Threatened Status

by Marsha Stanley

3 Comments

Over the past 18 months, I have had the incredible opportunity of having Monarch butterfly experts Chip Taylor and Lincoln Brower as guests in my home here in the Adirondacks. We had hours to converse with each and ask questions to our heart’s content. We found both brilliant, charismatic experts in their field. Each came to lecture at The Wild Center, the Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks, under the sponsorship of a small non-profit I helped found, AdkAction.org.

Of course, I am no scientist and no expert on this subject. But I find myself having to make a choice of whether to side with Lincoln or Chip on Lincoln’s recent quest to have Monarchs added to the threatened species list, which offers all its potential protections. » Continue Reading.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Marsha Stanley: Monarchs And The Power Of One

by Marsha Stanley

13 Comments

My friend Theresa Mitrovitz from Tupper Lake has a small marvel in her yard this week which, if replicated in thousands more backyards, could help save the Eastern migration of the monarch butterfly. I hounded Teresa and her husband John into joining AdkAction.org, a non-profit for which I volunteer, and soon after Theresa jumped with enthusiasm to help with the organization’s project to conserve Monarchs and the milkweed so crucial to their lifecycle.

For twenty years Monarch numbers have been declining steeply. Last year no monarch butterflies were reported in the Adirondacks, and none were sighted in the annual butterfly count at Lake Placid. This year Monarchs have shown signs of a comeback in the North Country and elsewhere, but they have a tough period ahead if they are to continue their age-old flight back and forth to Mexico where they winter. » Continue Reading.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Marsha Stanley: Invite An Artist To Take Up Residence

by Marsha Stanley

5 Comments

This is the tale of how we came to welcome an accidental artist in residence into our home, why you might want to do it, and how much the Adirondacks stands to gain.

Last summer, my husband and I impulsively pulled into View, the new art gallery in in Old Forge, and stumbled onto a one-woman show by Montreal artist Holly Friesen. We fell in love with her signature piece, “Weaving Roots of Time,” an arresting 30 x 60 triptych depicting a mysterious grove of old trees which had grown moodily on and around boulders.

Both of us were struck by how closely the painting of a scene in Canada’s Laurentian Mountains resembled hundreds of similar scenes we have hiked past in the Adirondacks. In fact, all the paintings in Holly’s show looked like scenes in the Adirondacks. Then it struck me: the huge boulders strewn all over the Adirondacks some 10,000 years ago by retreating glaciers are sisters to the very rocks in Holly’s paintings, torn from those mountains and deposited in ours. » Continue Reading.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Wired: Learning And The Internet

by Marsha Stanley

1 Comment

Watching The Wild Center live telecast of the Wired Education teacher training day October 25th, I felt excited, inspired, amazed — and oh, so dumb.

I sat at my computer for five hours mesmerized by internationally respected educational consultant Alan November. His keynote address and two workshops were presented to almost 200 Adirondack teachers participating in person at The Wild Center and virtually at three remote sites. » Continue Reading.

Monday, August 26, 2013

A Visit With Monarch Butterfly Specialist Chip Taylor

by Marsha Stanley

6 Comments

The Monarch butterfly Eastern migration will survive the current crisis and make a come-back, although probably never again to the population levels seen in the 1990s, predicted noted Monarch scientist Dr. Orley “Chip” Taylor in a lecture at The Wild Center Friday night.

Adirondack residents still turning over milkweed leaves this season in search of as glimpse of a Monarch caterpillar or larvae will probably be disappointed, Dr. Taylor said, because the Monarchs arrived at this northern latitude too late and in too few numbers to produce a generation here this year.

Dr. Taylor’s lecture to an audience of nearly 100 Friday night at The Wild Center in a visit sponsored by AdkAction.org as part of its butterfly and milkweed conservation initiative this year. Taylor is a University of Kansas professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and founder of Monarch Watch. » Continue Reading.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

How Can We Help Monarchs?

by Marsha Stanley

8 Comments

Not a single Monarch butterfly was spotted in the Lake Placid butterfly count conducted by citizen scientists Saturday, July 13. This marks only the second time in the 20-year history of the count that no Monarch was sighted by the volunteers.

The Insectarium de Montreal issued a press release with this opening paragraph on July 16:

The first monarch butterflies generally arrive in Québec in mid-June. This year, experts and the many people taking part in citizen science initiatives monitoring monarchs have seen an estimated drop of 90% in the overall monarch population in Eastern Canada. This is unheard of. Across the continent, scientists and butterfly enthusiasts are worried, and the Montréal Insectarium echoes their questions and concerns: could the migration of monarchs in eastern North America one day disappear altogether?

The word is much the same all over the U.S. and Canada. » Continue Reading.