2024 Draft Highlights

A hun­dred vol­un­teers gave 600+ hours to plant 20 oaks, irri­gate 200, and main­tain 2,000. We com­plet­ed a part­ner­ship with Stanford’s Fuka­mi Lab to estab­lish 512 plants at 16 research sites around the Stan­ford Dish. Mag­ic was fea­tured on the Plant a Tril­lion Trees Pod­cast and in The Tree Col­lec­tors by New York Times best­selling author Amy Stew­art. On the win­ter sol­stice, 60 vol­un­teers plant­ed along a sea­son­al water­way in Frenchman’s Park 400 Cal­i­for­nia native shrubs and forbs, some in the shade of oaks we’d plant­ed 21 years prior!

We grew Sil­i­con Val­ley Bar­code of Life both on the SF Mid­penin­su­la and in the East­ern Sier­ra, deploy­ing Malaise traps at five sites and hand col­lect­ing hun­dreds of unique spec­i­mens. We pub­lished, “So You Think You Don’t Like Bugs?” in The Sheet, the Mam­moth Lakes news­pa­per. (tran­script) Cal­i­for­nia Insti­tute for Bio­di­ver­si­ty sup­port­ed SVBOL with mon­ey grants and by defray­ing sequenc­ing costs for tens of thou­sands of spec­i­mens. SVBOL prin­ci­pal sci­en­tists were among 20 bio­di­ver­si­ty researchers who par­tic­i­pat­ed by invi­ta­tion in a Cal­i­for­nia Insect Bio­di­ver­si­ty Ini­tia­tive strate­gic plan­ning meet­ing with for­mer Cal­i­for­nia Gov­er­nor Jer­ry Brown at his rur­al retreat. In Decem­ber we received per­mits to col­lect on Mid­penin­su­la Region­al Open Space Dis­trict lands, and we com­plet­ed the first of sev­er­al planned deploy­ments of a dozen Malaise traps at Stanford’s Jasper Ridge Bio­log­i­cal Pre­serve ‘Ootchamin ‘Ooy­ak­ma.

With Reduce Waste. Feed Peo­ple. we col­lect­ed 17 tons of sur­plus food from 24 Cal­i­for­nia Avenue Farm­ers’ Mar­ket ven­dors, sort­ed it, and deliv­ered accept­able items to Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vices Agency and to 1,000 Grains for dis­tri­b­u­tion to hun­dreds of hun­gry fel­low humans through food bank, hot meal, and nutri­tion edu­ca­tion pro­grams. In part­ner­ship with Com­mit­tee for Green Foothills, Tuolumne Riv­er Trust, Mono Lake Com­mit­tee, and Amer­i­can Bird Con­ser­van­cy, we researched, authored, and deliv­ered to fed­er­al, state, and local gov­ern­ments tes­ti­mo­ny sup­port­ing eco­log­i­cal­ly sound pol­i­cy. We con­tributed to orga­niz­ing and pro­duc­ing an Ever­green Park Neigh­bor­hood Asso­ci­a­tion block par­ty and co-host­ed the organization’s 43d annu­al pic­nic. Both were attend­ed by 100+ neigh­bors. Magi­cians pro­vid­ed live music at the par­ty and pic­nic and at events spon­sored by our part­ners, Hid­den Vil­la and Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vices Agency. Final­ly, we trav­eled to San­ta Cruz to deliv­er a eulo­gy for Frank Andrews, who was for 30 years an advi­sor to Mag­ic and with whom we taught at both Stan­ford and UCSC. Author of The Art and Prac­tice of Lov­ing, which we at Mag­ic for decades have used in our teach­ing, Frank assigned rights to Mag­ic when they revert­ed to him and autho­rized us to pub­lish a 25th anniver­sary edi­tion which we dis­trib­ute in print and make avail­able with open access online.

We guid­ed dozens of clients to per­son­al trans­for­ma­tion through move­ment with 200+ hours of instruc­tion in hatha yoga, resis­tance train­ing, swim­ming, run­ning, and indoor row­ing, as well as through oth­er prac­tices for con­scious per­son­al evo­lu­tion, includ­ing med­i­ta­tion, inter­mit­tent fast­ing, and grat­i­tude jour­nal­ing. We wel­comed a Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sports Med­i­cine cer­ti­fied per­son­al train­er to the Palo Alto ser­vice learn­ing community.