a little red hen

Chinese New Year greetings: John Fu & Warren Buffett

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This morning's email brought a dramatic, red, Chinese New Year greeting from John Fu in Copenhagen.  He was a college student when we met in Xian, China eleven years ago.  Determined to get his next degree in the English-speaking world (he was a proficient translator in 2000),  he got his MBA in Denmark where he now lives and works as a business consultant.  We had hilarious experiences with Chinese government officials he helped me to interview in Xian.  I wanted to know how they were dealing with garbage issues. Did they have a problem?  Mayo, as they say in Chinese.

As we sat in a cab on our way to Xian officialdom,  John asked what was in my backpack.  Unzipping the green bag, I pulled out the world's smallest kitchen composter and a red knit worm to explain my kitchen composting mission.  "Oh, so this is your religion," was his insightful reply.*

Dedicated capitalist that he is, John will surely be delighted to be headlined with Warren Buffett performing at a charity fund-raiser.  If you can read Mandarin, let me know how the translation works.  When I went to YouTube for the embed code, I found such ugly, racist comments!  Opened another window on why the U.S. is in deep stuff politically and socially.  Of course, you already knew everything about that from at weeks of the Republican side-show that dominates every TV news program. 

But I digress.  Busha Full of Grace raised my consciousness about the Year of the Dragon.  Currently this spunky, knitting Grandma is nanny to a Chinese family. To expand her knowledge of the celebration, her search led to the ten important facts she posted.   "No sitting in a bedroom" knocked me out;  Number 10, "Songbirds are Good," was more expected.

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*To honor my "religion," John Fu had a chop mark made  with "compost"  in Mandarin.    For "This Dirt Museum: The Ladies' Room," my 2001 installation, I  enlarged the image,  added the word in Spanish. It had a prominent spot in the show and still hangs in our apartment.  Shown here with a few of the 150 red worm interpretations I knit for the exhibition.  [You too can have a chop; order here.]

Though amused by the idea that my intense practice of transforming  kitchen green waste into a useful, earth-enhancing amendment might be considered highly spiritual, perhaps a "religion," John's response has grown on me.

When we moved to our retirement community, a woman in the mail room invited me to join the Green Team.  What a vintage designation my NYC self thought.  Not that at all I discovered.

 We now live in Portland, Oregon, sustainability-intense city where you never forget your reusable grocery bag.  [See latest "Portlandia" episode.]  Once again we kitchen compost.  I am very involved in encouraging neighbors to do likewise.  No longer do red wigglers in our living room transform the stuff, but the intention is the same.

 

Urban Gardening: minus land & muscle?

Back in the day when I was  East Coast correspondent for  "Worm Digest" and connecting with red wiggler worms in our New York City apartment, the number one question people would ask:

  What do you do with the compost?

Second most asked was by those with some knowledge of compost possibilites:

Do you have a balcony?  [for indoor plants in spring and summer]

Think about the mentality of New Yorkers--and many city dwellers--around Question One.  It's all about collecting stuff and getting rid of it rather than re-using it.  Environmental consciousness-raising needs to look at the questions asked.  Often these focus on why would a person do something that creates more work for him/her?   [photos: myself wearing knit red worm in NYC kitchen taling about kitchen composting & famous Wormware visiting the Grand Canyon]

Question Two (I had neither balcony nor houseplants) continues to have relevance for me in conversations with  folks in the sustainability world.  Portland, Oregon, my final home, is very big with the S word and its many applications. At the Saturday Farmers Market at Portland State, the big one, I volunteered for a few hours in connection with their observance of  National Food Day, officially Monday, October 24.

Carolyn White, PSU instructor for "Food Affairs,"  another Chiron class (student designed and led) I'm taking, was in charge.  The text for the course, "Menu for the Future," has been developed by NWEI (Northwest Earth Institute) in a way to encourage discussion. Articles by leading writers on food and its production are followed by questions:

Michael Pollan struggles with actually eating his Monsanto potatoes....Would you feel obligated to tell guests these were what they were being served?

Most essays are thoughtful and important. Missing for me is the urban piece:  that's where most live and when your only choice is a large supermarket, how do buy more organic foodstuffs.

Farmworker Housing Development Corp (FHDC) was the table next to ours.  I had a chance to talk with Jaime Arredondo about their work to improve the living conditions of migrant and seasonal workers in Oregon.  The need is enormous for affordable housing; 500 wait in the mid-Willamette region for affordable apartments they build and manage.

The inclusion of FHDC for this event impressed me since I've not seen a comparable group at Union Square Greenmarket in NYC though the efforts through food initiatives --making their produce more accessible to people on food stamps and beyond their numerous sites--have increased in the last few years. You can sign the petition HERE to ask Congress to "fix America's broken food system."  Fair conditions for food and farm workers is one the organizers goals.

Recent college grad (left) purchased "Menu for the Future" for her environmental work in Salem, Oregon, where she recently moved.  She is the umpteenth person I've met who finds the state capitol not too exciting.  Similar reports  on Desparately Seeking Salem  when first read  last year but that blogger seems to find more possibilities lately.  Maybe she can connect with this newcomer...not easy being green, as the saying goes.

Urban Farm Collective table with handmade sign and straightforward tee-shirt.  Patient woman there told me about senior housing in north Portland with its own community garden and tried to tell me there had to be a way for me to grow my own food.  People here not used to hardcore urbanites who are also challenged to bend much.  Make contact if you're ready to sign on for the 2012 season.

Ron arrived with our Zabar cart filled with veggies from Grow Portland, a group we met last year, admired their work developing small, city-owned plots for farming.  Supported at the start by the "seeding change for small businesses," of Northwest Mercy Corps they had funding to work with women and men from many countries--Bhutan was one--who had spent too many years waiting in refugee camps.  They also have expanded to help  small scale growers become part of CSAs (community-supported agriculture), are looking for more to add the coming year.

Being around all this on-the-ground sustainability, seeing how many young people are drawn to it, I enjoyed an energy boost.  I got this nifty button from the young women (where are the men...occupying portland?) at the table for  Food & Water Watch,  folks like Carolyn Wright, you and me, who think we must demand that Congress puts together a Fair Farm Bill.  Next session, people!

Support fair conditions for food and farm workersSupport fair conditions for food and farm workersSupport fair conditions for food and farm workersSupport fair conditions for food and farm workersSupport fair conditions for food and farm workersSupport fair conditions for food and farm workers

 

Making bread in public...will you join me?

Oh, I am way behind in writing about my new idea to repair the world (tikkun olam again). 

KNEADING TO KNOW brought together ideas from two classes this past term at PSU, "World Population and Food Supply" and "Street Art class plus my recent dive into Sourdough bread baking.  Being in the class gave me the push I needed. I'd been wondering whether it was too late in this life for another one.

This effort would be much more modest than This Dirt Museum and Knit One Red Worm, more doable by non-crafters that Knit a Condom Amulet.  KNEADING TO KNOW is for all who eat bread, could be encouraged to make their own.

In early April, each of these professors received a plain brown paper bag with a slice of sourdough bread inside.  That was the first step.  Only slightly public (photo of my slipping the bag onto Hunter Shobe's lectern in "World Population" class). With excellent synchronicity, Rosemary, who gave me the sourdough starter, is speaking to him.

Beginning with  the "Bread not Bombs" image as the  organizing idea and image,  Kneading to Know joined my earlier declarations to become Manifesto #3: [Double-click on  images to enlarge]

 

What occurred next speaks to art as community...stay tuned.

 

 

 

 

Not doing that again--sustainability in real old life

My neighbor B.P. (not to be confused with the infamous oil company) suggested at a community meeting that we needed to stretch our recycling efforts.  She demonstrated her suggestion by holding up plastic berry boxes that she stated could be washed and returned  to the store.  Audience exchanged dubious glances.  "You could also," she continued, "take them to the Farmers Market and put your raspberries in them."

I thought that was hilarious.  Then checked myself.  Wasn't it my idea back in 1998 that New Yorkers could kitchen compost with red wiggler worms?  Didn't I use similar little plastic boxes to create the "world's smallest kitchen composter."  Many laughed,  suggested it was undoable.  Challenged, especially now a resident of the most sustainably-conscious city in America, Portland, Oregon, I would try out her idea.

More than that, Saturday, June 17, 2010, would be my uber-effort on the container front.  In keeping with the local ethic and encouragement in stores, we've become more dutiful carriers of canvas bags.  Still find it a bit uncomfortable to simply drop the unwrapped aspirin bottle into my purse and not wonder if the "Thief!" electronics will sound as I leave the drugstore.  But the Farmers Market at PSU is the place to feel righteous about dispensing even with canvas:  I have seen people  do it.

You know how everyone is very polite in PDX?  That's how it was with the young man at the blueberry table.  Explained that I was just going to transfer the berries from the little green paper box to my plastic one.  "Think they will fit?" I anxiously asked Ron.  "Sure."  He's patient too.  Well, they fit but it's a trickier maneuver than I'd imagined; quickly gathered up wandering berries as the line behind me grew longer.

Lost a few berries, felt womanly righteousness.  Spent more time than usual in figuring out how to arrange food.  Took along a shoe box in the Zabar cart...yes, there is one plastic bag for the apricots/peaches.  Ran out of canvas...gets more complex around items that need to be held while selecting, then weighed on purchase.    

My message to B.P. is that the effort was informative for my future.   But  the berry-box-reuse notion is history in my house.  

Maybe B.P., a former elementary school teacher, and I (once one of those too) could do is design a class, "Transformative Sustainability," a/k/a  "Right-thinking Bagging Techniques for the  Older Person." Respectful, conscious of age-related limitations. 

Watch for an announcement in the Oregonian where a major grocer's  anti-plastic-bag  initiative hit today's front page. [Be sure to read the online comments following the story...are they what you'd expect?]

Compost Redux: Sustainability Notions in a CCRC

 Earlier this week, I had lunch with Marian M, chair of Terwilliger Plaza's Green Team.  I'd attended one of their monthly meetings and wanted to know more about their efforts to increase our CCRC's sustainability.  

[Aside:  "Sustainability," we have learned, is a major Portland buzzword.   This link to an EPA definition is a reminder that "Nearly 80 per cent of Americans live in urban environments..." Probably anyone in the U.S. reading this--city or suburb.]

Learned that the Green Team was formed by residents about three years ago.  Proper battery collection and the reduction of lighting in public rooms have been among their projects. Often recycle innovations involve more complexity and   planning than you would imagine. Disposal of old television sets during the 2009 digital changeover was one of these.  Most recent, and very impressive, is a grant Terwilliger has received to study the Green Roof idea as another possibilty.

 Shared with Marian about my own work "Composting in Manhattan" and her response was revelatory.  Seriously:  the GT has initiated an outdoor compost collector behind the building.  No red wigglers simply a straightforward arrangement.

Delighted with the chance, I disposed of the beet ribs (are these gorgeous beets) from a recent dinner.  Placed dried leaves over them, poked a bit.  Voila!  Composting in PDX, very satisfying.  Thanks to Marian and the GT, no more Bloom veggies/eggshells/coffee grounds down the chute.

Maybe more compost jewelry, knit red wiggler worms in the future.  My imagination travels to a chorus of Green Team composters...elegant Terwilliger residents of both sexes decorated with beads from beets as they make poetry and music about the satisfaction of latelife composting.

The future of Terwilliger sustainability looks promising.

Composting in Manhattan, 1998

Ron Bloom Celebrates Another Birthday!

All my love and thanks for all the places we've been, crises we've survived,  children and grandchildren we've loved...

...and your great patience in teaching me too many things to list...what I've learned from your pleasure in sharing with everyone who comes within your range.

  All of us look forward to many more June tenths with you--

most especially yours truly ...

Celebration: High-Rise Style...Last night--a building party where we live. Lee Morgan, Ron's co-chair and great party-giver, suggested this one as they wrapped up their term of office, turned it over to another pair. Singing the Birthday song was a high point of the pot-luck evening...who says New Yorkers don't care about one another?

Coming Out: Myself as "Reluctant Elderly"

Flipping through images in my iPhoto file (favorite thing about my Mac), I come upon images from birthday lunch for my 75th last August.  I meant to blog on how it felt to be "feted" by a group of strangers.

Did I enjoy it?  Absolutely.  Were the people my age or older?  It was a mix at my table, mostly women but more men than I'd expected.  Must have been 100 there for lunch at the Lenox Hill Senior Center.  Got that?  The invitation to celebrate this landmark day (pictures here from the event) came about because I had joined the Center back in 1998.  And never returned.

Backstory.  Deep into kitchen composting as an art form, I'd applied for a small grant from the Puffin Foundation.   The idea was to form a group of seniors into a Kitchen Compost Troupe.   We'd  celebrate the 2001 closing of Fresh Kills, home of the world's largest garbage dump on Staten Island.  Each of us would have nurtured my patented invention, "WormWare,"  world's smallest kitchen composter.

Of the several ways I devised to gather such a group together, I visited Lenox Hill Senior Center.  I spoke with a social worker about making a future presentation on "Composting in Manhattan."   She suggested that I have lunch that day and get a measure of the participants.  Readers, I joined a senior center.

That was a jolt.  It was very personal--unlike teaching a class in Baltimore at an "Eating Together" program in my fifties--this was about me at 66.  Not ready, too soon, I thought. The grant came through but my plan changed after writing a second grant.   "This Dirt Museum:  the Ladies' Room," was an interactive installation at Queens Botanical Garden in 2001.

I never returned to the Lenox Hill Senior Center.  Well, they were all the way over on the east side of town where I rarely go except to museums.  Their knitting group was not as, how would you say it, "up-to-date" as the ones I attended.  The food was very institutional and I felt uncomfortable about it's small one dollar price.  This was not me.  At that moment, aside from reluctance to see myself as one of them, I hit the social class issue.  Senior centers in many cities have been established for people with limited resources.  In New York, their financial support comes from  non-profits working with the aging and the City Council.

Fast forward to 2008.  After all my years of neglect--I did carry the membership card in my wallet for years-- Lenox Hill was gracious enough--to send me an invite to their monthly Birthday Lunch.  Had I been asked in other years (I forget much these days)? I decided to take them up on their offer.

I really enjoyed myself, Ron too but he's less critical than I.  Several of my lunch companions were working seniors.  One woman in public relations wanted to connect with my westside Democratic club because she said  it seemed more active in the Obama campaign than her eastside group.  She also thought  knitting Condom Amulets was amusing and a smart way to promote safe; the actress sitting next to her agreed. 

Having heard that there was a national a move to "update" senior centers.  In New York City the Mayor had big plans to make them more "health-oriented" and reduce their funding.  On the way out I spoke with the two social workers running the program.  Things were not good they reported.  In December, Mayor Bloomberg was resisted in his efforts, with strong opposition by our Council President, Christine Quinn.  Elsewhere from Wellesley, Massachusetts to Los Angeles, California, it's evident that denial about aging takes many forms in addition to my own reluctance.  

Ron and I will soon move into a continuing care retirement community in Portland, Oregon.  Besides accepting it to myself,  I have come out to anyone who will listen that it feels right to describe myself as "elderly."   Yes, more attitude adjustments lie in ahead.

[This post in appreciation of  two this week at TGB on aspects ageism and especially the comment by Tamar at Only Connect that followed the first post.]

ZIP CAR: environmental idea almost as good as composting

 Heard about them, seen them lately around New York, now Ron and I had a reason to rent a zipcar in Portland.  We only paid $66.00 for the entire day--insurance, gas and 180 miles a day were all free.

We began by signing up on line for approval.  When we knew we needed a car, we went online again and arranged to pick it up at one of two locations near where we're staying.

The most challenging moment:  where to place the membership card to gain access.   After that it was easy, used the gas card located in driver's visor.  

 A sunny day in Portland ends with leaving the car where we'd picked it up.

My son-in-law tells us that PDX has saved a great deal of money by having zipcars used by city employees on a per-need basis rather than a fleet of city-owned cars.  And it was a hybrid vehicle. 

As alternatives to car rental, zipcars are gaining populariity in many U.S. cities.   I do wish some one would come up with as compelling an idea for kitchen composting, my own favorite environmental idea that requires no registration--only red wiggler worms and a  box.

Hot Harlem Morning...Women Walking

The radio said it was going to be a very warm day Thursday, September 4, in New York.  In my head that was not about the early morning.  A little breezy at 9 a.m. as I walked out of my building to meet the new weekly walking group.   About six of us try various routes each week. Might not be doing this if I had not started carrying a pedometer.  And that happened when I joined the online support group, Elderexercise.

This was the third week with my neighbors.   We returned to Riverside Park and a slightly different path.  Some serious steps, down then back up.  Movies in the park!  End-of-summer flowers losing their earlier strong  color.

Worms on the path remind me of the time a few years ago with red wigglers composting in my  kitchen.

Something that always surprises me: special events for New Yorkers and their cosseted dogs.  Cats, preferred by many apartment dwellers, never get their public due here.

We'd started around 120th and Broadway, planned to reach 96th in the Park.  But we turned back at 103rd Street as the heat got to us.    Past Grant's Tomb, Sakura Park, a pleasant, hardly noticed block-square green space.  Ron and I came to sit here on September 11, 2001.

A smile for the camera in honor of the local storefront, Praise the Lord Dental.  We logged three miles.