My 14 month-old son says maybe five comprehensible words, but my favorite is flau-wa. Most of his new words ( ball, mama, dada) start as just a play on sounds or an onomatopoeia, then they have amazing specificity (amazing for a mom!) as he points directly at the named thing. In the third stage he generalizes and goes-to-town, and suddenly the moon is a ball and a circle is a ball, and balls are literally everwhere. Flau-wa has hit the third stage and now seems to name not just all the flowers in our garden and neighborhood, but all things plant-like at eye-level. Working with a baby in a garden (even a small 500sq foot one) , letting him dig, teaching him what is edible and what is not, or how not to torture a snail, is an extremely relaxing activity. We notice bees, hummingbirds, robins, finches, and sparrows, which plants they frequent and which days of the year they seem preoccupied with our garden and when they have moved on. The sparrows, which played and hung out in packs of 40 or 50 on the telephone wires, diving and performing aero-acrobatics between our small trees, have moved on. The robins seem bigger and the lesser gold finches dropped in for a week or so in early April. I always notice their entrance on the scene because of their calls. I suppose I should teach Jackson how to collect and throw out all our snails or learn to enjoy escargot, but I haven't the heart for it yet. We could get a duck to eat them (and wouldn't he love that!).
What I couldn't know empirically is that their presence means the environment is reasonably unpolluted (says Pam Peirce in "Golden Gate Gardening", an awesome resource book for our area) and that the mockingbirds and robins control pests. The robins eat wireworms (their big 1/2 inch leathery, pale yellow larvae found in the soil around our plants look like something unearthed from Pan's Labyrinth), cutworms and caterpillars and the mockingbirds eat beetles, grasshoppers and other insects. Ironically, among the reasons why we have so many birds in the first place is because there are insects. I do my best to keep my pesticide-happy husband from using toxins. Tiny ants thrive as do probably a whole host of other pests. We were fortunate to inherit a garden intended for local fauna. We have what is officially called "attractant flowers" which are "especially valuable in late winter and early spring when little is blooming" (GG Gardening, p. 131). We have Mexican Pineapple Sage (Salvia elegans) bushes, drought-resistant, beautiful hummingbird lovers with small throated red and pink lips for flowers. Apparently, this sage's leaves can be used to make tea or to flavor fruit dishes. The flowers can decorate a salad or dessert. We also have two Japanese Plum trees (Nubiana's, I think) that are famous in the neighborhood. The white-crowned sparrows feast on new buds in February and local human families, with a similar seasonal knowledge, stop by around in June to eat plums. One such neighbor asked me if he could bring his daughter to show her the fruit he ate when he was as kid growing up around here.
The middle school where I teach does not have a garden except for the ruins of a long neglected garden beside the front door. It has a black top, which is an effective space for basketball, handball and gossip's required space for clique dispersal. We have no curriculum around food though I am developing a project about waste for whole school in June. Perhaps because we don't own the property or that as a community we have been chronically ambivalent about the pittance of a play yard, this area of school life is sorely lacking. Compare it to Martin Luther King School's Edible Garden a few miles away that is now world famous thanks to Alice Waters and Prince Charles and Camilla's visit, and we clearly lack vision in that area of middle school life. Even though all we have to offer the birds is uneaten lunch, huge seagulls and crows guard the blacktops like savvy bullies.
("speechless sorrowing of Nature")
(you will get lost you will be left)
bending over looking for the trinket lost
(most quiet heaven)
-- "Middle Distance," from Swarm by Jorie Graham
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Bill Mckibben's questions
Bill Mckibben's questions to live by: "What things about my circumstances can I change by myself and what require me to be politically active? Is my way of life at all sustainable? Durable? Could 6 billion people live anything like I am living? If not, what can I do politically?"
I want to check out Deep Economy: the wealth of communities and the durable future, by Bill McKibben. Definitely the reason my husband and I live in a 900 sq foot home in Berkeley, CA has to do with the East Bay community and its durability. Why is it durable? Because neighbors talk to each other about something other than lawn products, because our neighborhood is so diverse, because we have access to farmer's markets, a marina, great hiking trails and the ocean all by bike or public transportation. And because of the farmer's market I know what is in season and grown locally and can pick produce that does not require a lot of fossil fuel to grow and transport. The fish and meat counters of our stores list the sustainability of the fisheries and farms.
But we do not live in a way that 6 billion people could live largely because of our housing and food costs and the fossil fuels and manufactured products that we use. Our consumables. A few days ago, I bought some moisturizers made by a Colorado company. The box it come in was made of a biodegradable cardboard with basil seeds embedded in it-- just put it in a hole in your garden, and the box will come back to life. Can we imagine something similar for our yogurt containers? And what about our tooth brushes?
As a 40 year old, I feel that I sit upon a massive mound of garbage that if I imagine accurately is the detritus of my years with the privileges to buy and consume in the U.S.-- It would have shoes, and dresses, pants, hats, belts, 1000 yogurt containers, 10 of thousands of plastic bags, hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and gas...clearing out my aunt's basement after she held on to all her New York Times newspapers for 10 plus years I rescued for recycling 50 pounds of New York Times-- and that was just 10 years accumulation. I think school children should be asked at some point to draw everything that they've owned and thrown out in the first 15 years of life-- a sort of rite of passage before they enter full blown materialism.
I am from a family of shoppers. At a young age, I was taught how to shop. How to entertain myself for hours in a store while my mom bargained hunter for fashion, and I love shopping. I am a product of this culture without knowing its roots and consequences intimately. And yet my grandmother whose character rooted me and my mother cherished the orange put in her stocking as a child at Xmas, and hung her clothes on the clothes line long after she could have owned a dryer. Because of her I know sheets dried on a line are crisp and smell like the wind, like sails.
I want to check out Deep Economy: the wealth of communities and the durable future, by Bill McKibben. Definitely the reason my husband and I live in a 900 sq foot home in Berkeley, CA has to do with the East Bay community and its durability. Why is it durable? Because neighbors talk to each other about something other than lawn products, because our neighborhood is so diverse, because we have access to farmer's markets, a marina, great hiking trails and the ocean all by bike or public transportation. And because of the farmer's market I know what is in season and grown locally and can pick produce that does not require a lot of fossil fuel to grow and transport. The fish and meat counters of our stores list the sustainability of the fisheries and farms.
But we do not live in a way that 6 billion people could live largely because of our housing and food costs and the fossil fuels and manufactured products that we use. Our consumables. A few days ago, I bought some moisturizers made by a Colorado company. The box it come in was made of a biodegradable cardboard with basil seeds embedded in it-- just put it in a hole in your garden, and the box will come back to life. Can we imagine something similar for our yogurt containers? And what about our tooth brushes?
As a 40 year old, I feel that I sit upon a massive mound of garbage that if I imagine accurately is the detritus of my years with the privileges to buy and consume in the U.S.-- It would have shoes, and dresses, pants, hats, belts, 1000 yogurt containers, 10 of thousands of plastic bags, hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and gas...clearing out my aunt's basement after she held on to all her New York Times newspapers for 10 plus years I rescued for recycling 50 pounds of New York Times-- and that was just 10 years accumulation. I think school children should be asked at some point to draw everything that they've owned and thrown out in the first 15 years of life-- a sort of rite of passage before they enter full blown materialism.
I am from a family of shoppers. At a young age, I was taught how to shop. How to entertain myself for hours in a store while my mom bargained hunter for fashion, and I love shopping. I am a product of this culture without knowing its roots and consequences intimately. And yet my grandmother whose character rooted me and my mother cherished the orange put in her stocking as a child at Xmas, and hung her clothes on the clothes line long after she could have owned a dryer. Because of her I know sheets dried on a line are crisp and smell like the wind, like sails.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Garbage
A.R. Ammons' book of poems Garbage was a National Book Award finalist in 1993. Here are a few lines that play with the semiotics of garbage:
Garbage has to be the poem of our time because
garbage is spiritual, believable enough
to get our attention, getting in the way, piling
up, stinking, turning brooks brownish and
creamy white: what else deflects us from the
errors of our illusionary ways...
possibilites already here, this where we came
to and how we came: a priestly director behind the
black-chuffing dozer leans the gleanings and
reads the birds, millions of loners circling
a common height, alighting to the meaty streaks
and puffy muffins(puffins?): there is a mound,
too, in the poet's mind dead language is hauled
off to and burned down on, the energy held and
shaped into new turns and clusters, the mind
strenghthened by what it strengthens...
On another note:
We had friends over last night and after a great feast of halibut, salmon and tiramisu, we discussed ways to conserve. The topic shifted to some critical questions: Why can't anyone advise a way to convert an old slab foundation into a radiant heat system that holds heat? What exactly are wind credits? And where is the $15 going for the wind credits I bought this week at Whole Foods to offset our carbon footprint? The point is not to be negative, but rather to be critical so that all the great ideas and momentum that are coalescing around environmental and energy issues translate into sustainable programs and products.
Garbage has to be the poem of our time because
garbage is spiritual, believable enough
to get our attention, getting in the way, piling
up, stinking, turning brooks brownish and
creamy white: what else deflects us from the
errors of our illusionary ways...
possibilites already here, this where we came
to and how we came: a priestly director behind the
black-chuffing dozer leans the gleanings and
reads the birds, millions of loners circling
a common height, alighting to the meaty streaks
and puffy muffins(puffins?): there is a mound,
too, in the poet's mind dead language is hauled
off to and burned down on, the energy held and
shaped into new turns and clusters, the mind
strenghthened by what it strengthens...
On another note:
We had friends over last night and after a great feast of halibut, salmon and tiramisu, we discussed ways to conserve. The topic shifted to some critical questions: Why can't anyone advise a way to convert an old slab foundation into a radiant heat system that holds heat? What exactly are wind credits? And where is the $15 going for the wind credits I bought this week at Whole Foods to offset our carbon footprint? The point is not to be negative, but rather to be critical so that all the great ideas and momentum that are coalescing around environmental and energy issues translate into sustainable programs and products.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Plant consciousness for a new language
My husband and I just came up with the title of this blog: Blossom Jack, the name of a cow he once had and a reference to what I hope these posting will be about. I am here to capture some of the amazing innovations and news around green politics, environmental science, green education and green living-- what's inspiring today and how it's inspiring me and my friends.
So here goes:
Natalie Angier's article "Green, Life-Giving and Forever Young" in the Science Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/science/17angi.html?ex=1177646400&en=8daa8d1eefabbe8f&ei=5070&emc=eta1
Her thesis: "Plants are not only alive in their own right, they are also the basis of virtually all life on earth, including ours."
What's cool about Angier's thinking: plant consciousness. She explains how we take plants for granted. She begins, "Show somebody a painting of a verdant, botanically explicit forest with three elk grazing in the middle and ask what the picture is about, and the average viewer will answer, “Three elk grazing.” Add a blue jay to the scene and the response becomes, “Three elk grazing under the watchful eye of a blue jay.”
What you’re unlikely to hear is anything akin to, “It’s a classic temperate mix of maple, birch and beech trees, and here’s a spectacular basswood and, whoa, an American elm that shows no sign of fungal infestation and, oh yeah, three elk and a blue jay.”
And then Angier goes on to explain how plants are heroic, particulary impressive, how wouldn't it be cool to know one because they are autotrophic, which means they create their own food, and sophisticated in many other ways as well.
The article made me think of a class to teach "Arguments for the Environment"-- it would be 4 weeks of argumentative and creative writing, debate, environmental issues and education and 4 weeks of multi-media work. We would make an environmental movie in the style that my colleague and I created over the last few years at my middle school. Angier's essay would fit in 7-12 grade curric. It's cute, stylish, concise and even a tad cheeky.
Which leads me to thinking we need a new language to revolutionize the way we think about nature. Being green has been labeled as hippy-tree-hugging-talk for too long, and now it's already maybe sold out to mainstream advertising (I have mixed feelings about the sell-out. Is it a sell-out?) How to make the living world part of living language in a way that allows it to have style, edge, urgency, that allows it to elude stereotyping and didacticism. And can this language be alive in some way that is not simply apocalyptic, the way global warming has had to enter into our consciousness? Does a pliable language for the environment already exist outside the circles of the classic nature writers? For example, how do you get an urban kid who loves urban culture to relate? Consumption for a lot of us means a way out and up and not a death duel with life on the planet. Virginia Woolf said she desired, "some little language such as lovers use." Maybe it is this idea I'm going for: a little language that makes us fall in love with ourselves again and thus with the world again in a way that is generous and sustaining and super accessible.
I was thinking yesterday that if we think and talk of waste differently, for example, that waste is alive, that maybe we don't even call it waste anymore. (What else could we call it?) Will the new point of view then allow us to see death differently? Will death be less forboding-- something that does not pull us out of the moment, and of ourselves, and away from what is happening our all around us? Might we would then think of time differently too? For instance, if we see waste as alive, as an eternal presence (and not always the one we want, as in the case of carbon or toxins, or plastic car seats and strollers and all the plastic detritus that we feel we have to have as new parents ), it could alter our way of fundamentally seeing the world and what we love about it. I'm maybe being precious here; I can think this way because I don't have to worry about just making it through another day, though getting through another a year without using plastics, or fossil fuels? That would be interesting.
So here goes:
Natalie Angier's article "Green, Life-Giving and Forever Young" in the Science Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/science/17angi.html?ex=1177646400&en=8daa8d1eefabbe8f&ei=5070&emc=eta1
Her thesis: "Plants are not only alive in their own right, they are also the basis of virtually all life on earth, including ours."
What's cool about Angier's thinking: plant consciousness. She explains how we take plants for granted. She begins, "Show somebody a painting of a verdant, botanically explicit forest with three elk grazing in the middle and ask what the picture is about, and the average viewer will answer, “Three elk grazing.” Add a blue jay to the scene and the response becomes, “Three elk grazing under the watchful eye of a blue jay.”
What you’re unlikely to hear is anything akin to, “It’s a classic temperate mix of maple, birch and beech trees, and here’s a spectacular basswood and, whoa, an American elm that shows no sign of fungal infestation and, oh yeah, three elk and a blue jay.”
And then Angier goes on to explain how plants are heroic, particulary impressive, how wouldn't it be cool to know one because they are autotrophic, which means they create their own food, and sophisticated in many other ways as well.
The article made me think of a class to teach "Arguments for the Environment"-- it would be 4 weeks of argumentative and creative writing, debate, environmental issues and education and 4 weeks of multi-media work. We would make an environmental movie in the style that my colleague and I created over the last few years at my middle school. Angier's essay would fit in 7-12 grade curric. It's cute, stylish, concise and even a tad cheeky.
Which leads me to thinking we need a new language to revolutionize the way we think about nature. Being green has been labeled as hippy-tree-hugging-talk for too long, and now it's already maybe sold out to mainstream advertising (I have mixed feelings about the sell-out. Is it a sell-out?) How to make the living world part of living language in a way that allows it to have style, edge, urgency, that allows it to elude stereotyping and didacticism. And can this language be alive in some way that is not simply apocalyptic, the way global warming has had to enter into our consciousness? Does a pliable language for the environment already exist outside the circles of the classic nature writers? For example, how do you get an urban kid who loves urban culture to relate? Consumption for a lot of us means a way out and up and not a death duel with life on the planet. Virginia Woolf said she desired, "some little language such as lovers use." Maybe it is this idea I'm going for: a little language that makes us fall in love with ourselves again and thus with the world again in a way that is generous and sustaining and super accessible.
I was thinking yesterday that if we think and talk of waste differently, for example, that waste is alive, that maybe we don't even call it waste anymore. (What else could we call it?) Will the new point of view then allow us to see death differently? Will death be less forboding-- something that does not pull us out of the moment, and of ourselves, and away from what is happening our all around us? Might we would then think of time differently too? For instance, if we see waste as alive, as an eternal presence (and not always the one we want, as in the case of carbon or toxins, or plastic car seats and strollers and all the plastic detritus that we feel we have to have as new parents ), it could alter our way of fundamentally seeing the world and what we love about it. I'm maybe being precious here; I can think this way because I don't have to worry about just making it through another day, though getting through another a year without using plastics, or fossil fuels? That would be interesting.
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