The Spirit of the City

Blog Site Moved

2010-07-20T12:38:00.000-04:00

All activity for this blog has been moved to http://olgabonfiglio.blogspot.com/

Food Fight

2010-02-18T23:23:00.006-05:00

The Right Wing is now attacking school gardening programs.

Caitlin Flanagan, a contributing editor and book reviewer at The Atlantic Monthly, recently targeted famous chef, Alice Waters and Edible Schoolyard (ESY), a school gardening program sponsored by the http://www.edibleschoolyard.org/Chez Panisse Foundation, which she founded.

Waters started ESY in 1995 on a one-acre empty lot near Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, CA, in order to teach kids where their food comes from. ESY and gardening programs like it have been adopted by many public schools across the country.

In her article, Flanagan objects to garden programs because they take time away from the academic subjects. This causes underprivileged students to do poorly on their standardized tests and thus subjugates them to failed, impoverished lives as adults.

Flanagan criticizes Waters for assuming the role of educator even though Waters and King Middle School Principal Neil Smith collaborated with teachers and community members to put the program together over a two-year period. Their goal was to integrate ESY into the middle school’s curriculum, culture, and food program, according to the ESY website.

Flanagan maintains that gardening programs should be held after school. Then, she chides not Waters but the California Department of Education “for allowing these gardens to hijack the curricula of so many schools.” In 2008, she says, 3,849 out of 9,000 California schools used ESY, which she regards as part of the "new Food Hysteria" that is promoted by “an agglomeration of foodies and educational reformers who are propelled by a vacuous if well-meaning ideology.” And, she says, they do this without a single study verifying that garden programs help students pass standardized tests in English and math!

Actually, Flanagan’s concern about the poor is the same kind of disingenuous patter that she also used in her book, To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife (2006), where she trashes the feminist movement and extols the emotional rewards and social value of the traditional housewife. She, herself, works from home, takes her children to school and cooks for her family at night—all with the help of a nanny and a housekeeper.

People like Flanagan are anathema to any discussion of the real issues. School gardening programs directly address the problem of getting children to eat good, nutritious food. This isn’t an easy thing to do and it has resulted in one out of three American children being overweight due to the fat-laden and high fructose food they eat both at home and in school. This diet is provided and promoted courtesy of the Big Ag corporations, which is all spelled out in the film, "Food, Inc."

It is notable that Waters' ESY program is complemented by other gardening programs like Will Allen’s Growing Power Youth Corps. He has been using gardens to provide children with academic experiences, teach them reading and mathematics and develop their entrepreneurial and life skills. So impressive is his success, that Allen was awarded the MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 2008.

Meanwhile, British chef and school food advocate Jamie Oliver has been trying to attack childhood obesity by helping Americans understand that the food they eat is killing them. He notes, for example, that four Americans die from the food they eat every 20 minutes, and that 10 percent of our health care bills ($150 billion) are obesity-related. That amount is expected to double in 10 years unless we do something to change our eating habits.

One of the astounding realities Oliver discovered is that many kids can’t even identify fruits or vegetables in their original form. That is because they are eating so much fast food, processed food, and restaurant food that they don’t know what real food looks like. A gardening program can alter this travesty.

BTW, Oliver will air “Food Revolution” on Friday, March 26 at 9 p.m. (EST) to explain his work in the “most unhealthy town in America:” Huntington, WVA, where half of its citizens are obese.

(Jamie Oliver was recognized for his efforts in teaching kids about food by winning the $100,000 TED Prize. The TED Prize is one of many programs of TED—Ideas Worth Spreading, a small nonprofit organization founded in 1984 that is devoted to bringing together people from the worlds of Technology, Entertainment, Design to converse.)

Gardens were a staple in American homes two generations ago and many people like Waters, Allen and Oliver demonstrate the wisdom in bringing them back. During World War I and II, as well as the Great Depression, American families grew backyard gardens that produced more than half their food. This is a lot of food in a small space. Some people are even raising chickens so they can obtain fresh eggs and meat.

So, Mrs. Flanagan: please don’t stop kids from learning how to garden. Their lives—and their health—depend on it. Isn’t that something precious our public schools can give them?

Winter Is Coming and With It, More Quiet

2009-12-01T08:31:00.003-05:00

Winter is coming and the noisemakers of my small Midwestern town will either be muffled by my storm windows or dispersed by the cold weather for the next few months.

I live in a beautiful, nature-oriented housing development that includes a couple lakes and a marsh, a variety of animal life and a generous mix of trees. The residents are considerate, they take good care of their property, and we have little crime. However, I can’t get the quiet I want in my own home without being bombarded by the outside rumble of giant lawnmowers, leaf blowers, big-engine trucks and buses, hospital helicopters, ceaseless home improvement, or the hum of air conditioners. Noise not only annoys me it depresses me because there’s no escaping it. But I’m not the only one who’s noticed the noise. Since 1997, noise has been reported as the number one problem in our neighborhoods, according to the American Housing Survey for the United States conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. And that’s beyond crime, bad odors, and other bothersome conditions. It’s time we do something about it!

Noise is a matter of decibels (dBA), the measurement of sound. The lower the decibel level, the less sound. The higher the level, the more sound. When sound becomes an irritation, it is called noise. Different people have different tolerances to sound, but the cumulative effect of exposure to noise can result in hearing loss, sleeplessness, headaches, nausea, high blood pressure, and heart attacks. Children exposed to too much noise don’t do as well academically as language, speech, cognitive, social and emotional development may be adversely affected.

While it is unrealistic to hope for perfect silence, Nature itself is full of sound, unnecessary noise impedes human interaction and has been known to escalate to anger, violence, even murder and suicide. Economically speaking, too many people moving out of a neighborhood because of noise can depress property values. So it is important that we recognize that noise degrades the quality of life in our communities.

Reducing noise from invading our homes is difficult to fight, however, because our lifestyles rely so much on machines. Many machines register decibels (dBA) much higher than 70 dBA prescribed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. To get an idea of how noisy it is out there, compare normal conversation, which is 55-65 dBA, to common noisemakers like loud car stereos (100-110 dBA), leaf blowers (95-105 dBA), lawn mowers (88-94 dBA), construction tools (100-130 dBA), motorcycles (100 dBA), city traffic (85 dBA). Add exposure to the indoor noises made by vacuum cleaners (84-89 dBA), food processors (93-100 dBA), hair dryers (80-95 dBA), and some children’s toys (135-150 dBA) and you are inundated with noise without much relief.

Most noise is a by-product of the machines we use but today we must also contend with noise that is made intentionally. Boom cars that roam our streets with loud, bass stereos are a common example. The drivers turn up the volumes of their stereos to anger others, especially women and the elderly. (This “benefit” is advertised in product literature!) Worse yet, city ordinances are largely ineffective against boom cars because the police must catch the offenders in the act.

I imagine what life would be like if the noise in my community were conscientiously reduced. Fireworks would only occur on the Fourth of July. Car owners would contain their music. Lawn enthusiasts would a broom instead of a leaf blower. The university would get rid of its canon that announces home team touchdowns. Truck and bus manufacturers would design quieter engines. The sound from air handlers on commercial buildings would be significantly abated.

Reducing noise in our communities is difficult because we are so unconscious about it or we don’t want to confront the noisemakers. To some extent, quiet no longer seems to be a natural part of life in our culture and people don’t know they have a right to quiet. However, we have seen change over such community-oriented issues once people became aware of the risks involved. Smoking, for example, was not only accepted but regarded as suave demeanor until research showed that smoke was a health risk to the smoker and nearby non-smokers as well. As a result, smoking was banned in public buildings and in many restaurants. People recycle to ease landfills and they support environmental protections, which clean the air and water. Motorists use seat belts and bicyclists and motorcyclists don helmets. Babies are strapped in car seats. Drunk drivers go to jail.

Initiatives for more quiet in our communities would bring some positive benefits to all of us, too. For one thing, we would preserve our hearing. We would also attract more people to our quiet urban and suburban areas and value the public spaces we share. We would calm down, be less tense, be more gentle, be more meditative.

Let’s work toward quieter communities where unnecessary sound is recognized as noise—and then minimized. Our quality of life—and health—is at stake.

Who Ya Gonna Call in an Environmental Disaster?

2009-10-25T19:34:00.004-04:00

Nine out of ten Americans now live in places of significant risk, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) These risks include things like dam failure, hazardous material exposure, nuclear explosion, terrorism and natural disasters like wild fires, heat, hurricane, thunderstorms, tornados, tsunami, earthquakes, floods, landslides, volcanoes and winter storms.

Actually, it appears that the increased risk of disaster is occurring worldwide due to climate change, deteriorating ecosystems and the expansion of poverty, says a UN Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction.

So what are we to do in the face of such threats to our lives, our homes, our communities-and our world?

"We need to change behavior in this country," Craig Fugate, FEMA's new director, told his emergency-management instructors at a conference last June. The "government-centric" approach to disasters increases the odds of catastrophic failure in a big disaster, as Hurricane Katrina so clearly showed.

Fugate not only has extensive and relevant experience in disaster management, he is not an FOTP (friend of the powerful) as many of his predecessors were. The former firefighter and paramedic, has served for the past 15 years as chief of emergency management in Alachua County and later for the State of Florida. He is reputedly a tell-it-like-it-is kind of guy who has had to plan for the worst and deal with the most difficult like Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Jeanne and Ivan in 2004 and Hurricanes Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005.

"We tend to look at the public as a liability," says Fugate. "[But] who is going to be the fastest responder when your house falls on your head? Your neighbor."
In fact, the 4,400-person agency was designed to defer to state and local officials. However, when the locals are overwhelmed by "system collapse," as Fugate calls it, the government must rely on the public because it will take the feds too long to respond. This is not a far-fetched idea, judging from Rebecca Solnit's new book, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster. In a "tour" of the some of the biggest disasters over the 100 years, she notes that people at the scene consistently react in a spirit of solidarity, generosity and altruism despite the prevailing belief among the authorities that disaster turns people into panicked and ruthless savages.

Solnit cites sociologist Charles E. Fritz, a former captain in the U.S. Army Air Corps stationed in Britain during World War II, to refute these social Darwinist beliefs.

"Disasters provide a temporary liberation from the worries, inhibitions, and anxieties associated with the past and future," said Fritz, "because they force people to concentrate their full attention on immediate moment-to-moment, day-to-day needs within the context of the present realities."

For example, thousands of people escaped San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and then set up a tent city in Golden Gate Park. On the third day after the quake, Anna Amelia Holshouser started a soup kitchen there with only a tin can and a pie plate. She subsequently raised money to buy supplies in neighboring Oakland and was soon feeding two to three hundred people a day. She did all this without fear, trauma or despondency and was one among many who pitched in to do whatever was possible in the wake of this devastating disruption to their lives.

Then the authorities moved in to take control because they feared people would loot and murder. They treated citizens with suspicion and shut down their assistance efforts, which they regarded as "renegade."

It's important to recognize that this negative attitude toward the public is rooted in Gustave le Bon's 1894 book, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. His thesis is that when people gather in crowds, they become primitive beings who act on instinct, which is akin to madness. The job of the authorities is to rein them in.

Such thinking has typically led to unnecessary imprisonment and needless killing of people as a gesture of saving the city from "the unlicked mob" (as one military commander in the San Francisco quake referred to the public) rather than saving the people from the disaster that destroyed the city.

While Solnit admits that some savagery does happen, people for the most part are just trying to survive. That Black people were reported to be taking food, clothing, shoes from retail stores after Hurricane Katrina, revoltingly overlooks the fact that most of them were trying help their neighbors who had largely been abandoned by the authorities. Of course, it also suggests the disgusting tinge of racism that still exists in our country today.

British authorities in London during the Blitz of World War II reacted in a similar overbearing and paternalistic way by worrying that citizens would act "like frightened and unsatisfied children." The truth was that the people carried on their lives during the day and at night they bedded down on the platforms of the underground because their homes were among the tens of thousands that had been destroyed.

"The people's role in their own defense and destiny was downplayed in order to stress an old-fashioned division of leaders and led," reflected historian Mark Connelly on the British response.

As Solnit examines people's resort to self-sufficiency, readers learn that disasters usually signal a societal turning point where its values and the strength of its structures are challenged not only by the obvious destruction of property but by a disruption of the social order. Yes, class war exists even in disaster where an imperceptible undercurrent resides among elites who are all about protecting their privilege and control of the society. (We last saw this in the man-made disaster of the bank failures and subsequent bailouts and bonuses.)

Kathleen Tierney, director of the University of Colorado Natural Hazards Center, refers to this phenomenon as "elite panic" where the concentration is all on preventing property crime as a justification to the use of force. And whom do the elites fear most? You guessed it: the poor, minorities and immigrants.

Sociologists contend that looting and civil disturbance are rare during disasters, however, the media can't resist it in order to "entertain our worst fears and then allay them...[when] all those rugged men and powerful leaders and advanced technologies" save the day. These portrayals of strength and control are especially important during a time of uncertainty. However, what the media consistently miss are the citizens' acts of bravery and kindness, which is what Solnit's book documents in a compelling way. Given all this sociological data, it is refreshing to see that Fugate is trying to influence change in FEMA's disaster response. For example, he's veered away from the agency's paternalistic vow to "protect the Nation from all hazards" in favor of a more collaborative promise to "support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together."

He is also attempting to overcome today's therapy culture that regards citizens as fragile and traumatized victims.

"You're not going to hear me refer to people as victims unless we've lost ‘em," says Fugate. "I call them survivors."

In reality, Fugate is tapping into something precious when it comes to Americans' response to disaster: our democracy, our public life, our own sense of ourselves as actors on our circumstances and our relationships to each other.

Disaster has the potential to bring us together as a society, says Solnit. Given the history of Americans' initial response to disaster, we seem to know what to do if and when disaster strikes. In the meantime, we need to build confidence and self-reliance in ourselves and educate our leaders about how we want to be treated when we are most vulnerable because given the depth of environmental damage due to climate change, most of us will most surely be affected.

Navigating Our Different Worlds

2009-10-18T02:41:00.001-04:00

I live next to a wooded area and my cat enjoys going out there as often as possible. In the summer, I hardly see him at all. A small stretch of manicured grass separates the woods from my house and acts like a boundary between civilization and the wild.

While he’s on that grass boundary, my cat seems to take a breath as if to prepare himself for the world he’ll meet that is so different from the world of my house. I imagine that he makes the same transition when he leaves the woods to return home.

Recently, I made a spiritual retreat at my old convent and became painfully aware of what a different world it had become since I had left it 25 years ago. And just like my cat who crosses a boundary from one world into another, I, too, found myself taking a breath to adjust to the changes.

The physical structures at the Motherhouse had undergone considerable renovation to accommodate the sisters’ new needs. Only the stairwells were recognizable as many of the walls had been moved and some of the rooms now had new functions.

The sisters themselves were changing. Some had aged and were adjusting to physical ailments, been stricken with memory loss or had to accept hard changes like the deaths of their friends. Many unfamiliar people were occupying the building; they were participants in various spiritual outreach programs offered by the sisters. Even the community’s organizational structure had changed as a result of a merger with five other communities whose small size had forced them to join together in order to survive.

My conversations with the nuns were different than before but in some ways they were the same. For example, I had dinner with Sister Irene, who was president of the community when I was in it, and with Sister Mary, one of the College librarians who had served in that mission for over 50 years. We talked about the politics of the day, something we had never done before and yet I knew I could count on the wisdom of their views for they had always been intelligent and insightful women.

My visit with Sister Margaret revealed things about her life and ministry that I didn’t know about even though we had lived together for two years. She talked in the same, spirited way but our conversation revealed to me how little we know of people we think we’re close to!

And then there was my encounter with Sister Agnes, 93, who mistook me for someone else and talked on and on about old times that I wasn’t a part of but which were obviously very precious to her.

At Mass I sat next to Sister Helen who had served as a missionary in Peru for 25 years, so when we exchanged the sign of peace, I broke out with a “La paz, hermana.” I doubt she understood my greeting, but I meant it as a bond that I felt with her since I had learned Spanish, visited Peru and had learned about the difficult conditions of the people she had worked with there.

Even though I had planned to make this weekend a spiritual one, I decided to leave the quiet sanctuary to attend a noisy Saturday night Democratic Party fundraiser. I saw many people I had worked with 10 years ago and just as I did with the sisters in the convent dining room, I found it necessary to re-establish our relationship of the past.

Most of the people there that night had known me as the party’s county chair and an ardent politico. One old friend even encouraged me to run for office. A few years ago I would have welcomed such an invitation, but I had since stepped into another world with a new identity as a writer and professor. Politics was no longer the place where I wanted to express myself or expend my energies.

All of us experience many different worlds in a weekend, a month, a year or a lifetime and the more worlds we encounter, the more confusing and chaotic our lives can be. While bumping against different worlds is invigorating and adventurous for some people it is definitely threatening to others. However, the times we live in demand that we operate in many different worlds, including those we wish we could avoid.

People who limit their worlds are really doing a disservice to themselves, their children and their community. They are making themselves fearful of others. Even 90-year-old nuns confined to the convent look forward to talking with the strangers who visit because they feel curious and enriched by them.

Such is not the case with those who try to force their narrow-minded agendas on others because they want to minimize the differences of their world and everyone else’s. This approach to life can potentially breed closed-mindedness, ignorance and lead to bigotry and destructiveness, which we are seeing lately as more and more hate crimes occur in our society.

This is one good reason why we must rekindle the spirit of diversity not because it is an ideology or a liberal feel-good thing to do, but because it is a fact of life.

Our lives today bid us to encounter many different worlds and the many different people in it. The best we can do is to accept, celebrate, and discover how the differences we experience can enrich our lives, our communities and each other. If we don’t, we will condemn ourselves to live in a world of fear and mistrust.

My Pet Goats

2009-08-24T15:49:00.002-04:00

This summer I’ve had the opportunity to plant, cultivate and harvest two 30x40-yard gardens on a small, sustainable farm owned by Ron Klein, Kalamazoo’s version of Joel Salatin. What I didn’t plan on was falling in love with the goats there and gaining some insight into a spirituality of food.

I first arrived on the farm when the baby goats were only a few weeks old. They hung out in two corrals—the “kid-bucks” in one and the “doelings” in the other. As I approached the fence, their natural curiosity and herd instinct drew them all toward me. I was flattered that they nudged me to pet them and feel their soft fur. I felt an instant connection with them.

Touching the goats wasn't my only pleasure. Since the garden is near the corral, the tedium of pulling weeds was delightfully complemented by the goats’ occasional bleats. Then, one day the doe-goats returned from pasture in single file down a small hill into the corral as the bell around their necks clanged. It was an absolutely magical sight and sound experience!

Eventually I asked Ron to let me watch him milk the goats. It was a very methodical process starting with the order of the goats. Shadow is always first, then Suki, HomeGirl or Chantelle, Ginger, Lilly, Elle and Suzu.

Ron taught me how to prep each doe for milking by following a strict procedure designed to ensure the utmost sanitation of the milk and care and cooperation of the doe. For example, the doe is led to the milking stand where she jumps up on a platform and has her head locked in over a feeder that provides her with a quart of specially mixed grain to munch on during the milking. Then her flanks are rubbed and her teats and udder are wiped with a washcloth soaked in warm water and special soap containing peppermint oil. Her teats and udder are further cleaned with a disposable disinfectant paper wipe and she's ready for milking.

“Hold the teat with your thumb and first finger to trap the milk and create a balloon,” Ron instructed. “You close off the opening back into the udder. Then use your middle and ring fingers to press out the milk.”

After I prepped Suki and HomeGirl, Ron invited me to milk HomeGirl, a very easy-going and cooperative brown LaMancha.

It seemed simple enough watching Ron milk each doe, but I just couldn’t get a hold of the doe’s teat. He reached over and started the flow. Then he had me try again and finally, my left hand got a little stream of milk going!

I milked HomeGirl for a while but gave her back to Ron because it took me so long, she was getting antsy and he had other work to do. After he emptied her, he had me spray her teat opening with “Fight Bac” disinfectant, unlock her head from the milking stand, give her a gentle rub, and lead her through the sliding door and into the barn.

This sliding door is sometimes tricky because if pushed too far outward, it will fall off. Usually a couple other anxious does try to barge into the milk room as the newly-milked goat is trying to get out. Ron taught me how to push on the goats' noses to back them off.

So many things to think about for such a seemingly simple procedure and I goofed on just about every step. I felt stupid and humbled.

A few days later Ron let me milk the goats again. He started me on Elle this time because her teats are longer and easier to hold. This time my right hand got out some milk but not my left. I then tried to milk Chantelle with the same result.

Ron said I needed to strengthen my forearms. Squeezing an athletic grip ball would help. So I bought one and practiced the milking motions in the air. I was determined to learn how to milk the goats, however, Ron reminded me that learning could only happen with practice and that would take time. I needed to be patient and keep trying.

Meanwhile, my affinity for the goats grew. For example, one day when we cleaned out the barn, neither was I grossed out by the smell nor mind scraping out the caked-on goat droppings and hay from the floor. I had to muster all my strength to pitch up the waste with a pitch-fork and lift it in a pile for the tractor to haul away for compost.

This was hard work and it definitely shook off any notions about the glamor of farming. My back ached, my bad knee hurt and at times I could feel fresh goat waste squishing in my leaky boots. However, I was very conscious that we did this all for the purpose of providing the goats with a clean and healthy home. (Of course, I didn’t want Ron or my farm buddies to think I was a woose if I quit.)

On my third try to milk the goats I decided to concentrate on using both my hands. I prepared Shadow for Ron to milk and he got a bucket out of her in no time. I then squirted the “Fight Bac” up her teats and led her back into the barn. As Ron ushered in Suki for milking, he noticed the bees from one of the hives were showing signs of swarming.

“That’s not good,” he said. “If they swarm now, they won’t last through the winter, without supplemental feed and care. You take care of the goats while I take care of the bees.”

I gulped but went to work.

This time my left hand got the milk flowing but not my right hand. I decided to do one teat at a time with my left hand but realized that would take forever. Then a miracle happened: I got both hands going by squeezing both teats at the same time—and a stronger flow of milk. Soon afterward, I successfully milked my first goat through to completion! I led Suki back into the barn and poured her milk from the bucket into a large stainless steel container in the next room. Then I prepared for HomeGirl.

As I milked the does, my farm buddies looked in on me, congratulated me on my progress and reported what was happening with the bees, which included Ron having to climb a 20-foot ladder! He was going to be busy for a while so I decided I had to finish the rest of the goats. I was so in intense, however, that I gritted my teeth until they hurt, so I milked the goats with my mouth open. That must have looked pretty weird.

HomeGirl was very patient with me and eventually I felt her udder go limp. Not only had I emptied her milk, but I suddenly comprehended this part of the doe’s anatomy!

But more happened. As I milked her, I naturally pressed my shoulder and ear against her side. Ron said this is a good way to control a goat but I found it just a pleasant thing to do. The rhythmic sounds of her rumen provided an interesting backdrop to her munching the grain and licking the feeder. She was just being a doe-goat but I felt a special oneness with her by recognizing that each goat is a sentient being with a personality, feelings, needs and daily dispositions. I had first learned this through my cat, my first pet, a couple years ago and now I was experiencing it with a goat.

I led HomeGirl back to the barn and then began working with Chantelle, my fourth goat, when Ron returned.

“I wouldn’t have left you alone if I didn’t think you could do it,” he said. “You are gentle with the goats and they like you and allow you to work with them.”

I really felt good about this. Actually, Ron had been giving me the 4-H treatment: teach the student by building her confidence and letting her learn by doing. My world in academe is abstract and theoretical. Milking goats is absolutely practical and a totally connected process. The goat is relieved of her load. The milk provides Ron and his wife with liquid to drink and cheese to make for their personal use. Milking demands close attention to certain details and responsibilities to the goats, to the safety and cleanliness of the products and to Ron who owns the goats.

And all this leads to another important issue. This fall Ron will process the kid-bucks for meat. He isn’t ecstatic about this even though they will fill his freezer. In fact, he feels very badly about it because he took such care helping them during the birthing process, which sometimes involved intervention in birthing and resuscitation to get them breathing. Consequently, he feels a keen responsibility to give them a good life on pasture and in the sun.

“Basically,” said Ron “we take very good care of them and they take care of and provide for us. This is good stewardship.”

My experiences on Ron's farm have given me a different understanding of food where animals (and plants) sacrifice their lives in order for us humans to go on with ours. The Native Americans recognized this dynamic and consequently prayed for the buffalo before they killed it and then thanked the Creator for its sustenance. This is so contrary to the way we American raise our meat today where the animals live in crowded feedlots and factory farms, are given numbers not names, injected with antibiotics, shipped on scary, fast-moving trucks and regarded as a profit.

I am also developing a new relationship with food through the time I spend and the muscle I expend to milk a goat or grow a potato. This all requires care, patience, responsibility—and a little luck from Nature. That’s why grace is said before meals, a practice whose purpose had become so routine for me and so disconnected from growing and raising food that it didn't make any sense because, of course, food just comes from the grocery store. Through Ron's goats I have become aware of the spiritual dimension of food. I only hope that more people have the opportunity to gain such important insights because food is basic to everyone's needs and essential to the quality of life.

Gardening Changes Fast Food Addict’s Life

2009-08-01T10:48:00.001-04:00

Last summer, Kalamazoo College senior Nick Leonard discovered a new way of life by way of his senior project. The pre-law English major was concerned about environmental issues, but he wrestled with ways he could approach this complex and multi-faceted subject in an authentic and compelling way that was meaningful to him.

Thanks to his girlfriend, who is a gardener and an activist in the local food movement, Nick decided to seek a two-and-a-half-month internship with the Detroit urban garden program.

He worked 40- to 45-hours a week from Tuesday through Saturday tending various community gardens, selling homegrown vegetables at the Eastern Market, and working on projects like the annual Detroit Agricultural Network's August tours.

"I enjoy getting my hands dirty and I like the outdoors," said Nick, who spent previous summers earning good money on landscaping jobs.

"Physical labor is especially gratifying in farming, though, because someone benefits from your work by eating the food you've produced. It makes the long hours of weeding, hauling, shoveling compost, watering plants, and hoping for rain worth it because you can see the results."

Nick also helped out at the Earthworks greenhouse, a 1,300-square-foot facility that produces more than 100,000 vegetable seedlings for family, community, and school gardens across the city at no cost. The organization's gardens also supply fresh, organic produce for the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, the Gleaners Community Food Bank on Detroit's Eastside and various neighborhood outlets.

Because there are no major grocery chains in Detroit and transportation is a problem, many poor people buy their food at gas stations and corner stores. It's no wonder that kids consider Coke and chips a meal! The urban gardens, however, provide people with an alternative to this "food desert," and they also bring neighborhood residents, young and old, together as a neighborhood community to produce the fruits and vegetables they can eat.

These hardcore facts about urban living taught Nick the connection between poverty and the environment. He also discovered that sustainability issues-as well as people's sense of self-sufficiency-can be addressed through the growing of food.

"I began to realize the human stake in environmental issues," said Nick, "especially as I read about instances of environmental racism in low-income communities across the country. Such racism was in play in Detroit, a ‘food dessert', which is best described as an area in which fresh produce is not easily available."

Although Nick is interested in environmental issues, he doesn't readily identify with environmentalists, whom he considered "tree huggers" and "hippies." However, the urban gardeners he met in Detroit taught him differently.

"These people work 50 hours a week and they not only care about the environment and sustainability, they do this work to help others," he said. For example, Nick's mentor, Kido (pronounced KE-doh) Pielack, 28, is an Americorps volunteer who works for Greening of Detroit, one of several nonprofit organizations involved in coordinating the city's gardens.

Kido supervised Nick every day for the first few weeks until he gradually left him on his own. While they worked, they found lots of time to talk, and often, after a long day, they shared a beer at a neighborhood tavern.

"He taught me everything I know about urban farming and much of my senior project wouldn't have been completed without his guidance."

Megan Kohn, 25, a Central Michigan University graduate and an urban agriculture apprentice for Greening of Detroit, was another person Nick met. Her charge was the Romanowski Park garden, a huge expanse of land on the city's southwestern side in "Mexicantown" where Hispanics, Arabs, and Muslims live. The park includes 20 raised beds of vegetables, a fruit orchard and compost pile, as well as soccer fields, basketball courts, and an elementary school. Megan also hosts a garden club for neighborhood kids and on occasion Nick helped her with it.

"It was an interesting adventure working with the kids," said Nick, who felt particularly challenged because "they were pretty rambunctious." Working the gardens, however, gave Nick and Megan an opportunity to talk in a calmer, more peaceful setting. They discussed the joys and difficulties of gardening, the politics of local food, the spiritual and philosophical principles of nature and the environment, and ways they could spread the word about homegrown produce to neighborhood residents.

These and the other young leaders he met were well-educated, dedicated to their work and sincere about living environmentally-friendly lifestyles. Quite often they lived in the same neighborhoods as the people they served. And they never treated Nick as "just an intern," he said. Instead, they entrusted him with responsibility as they did any member on staff. They were also interested in his senior project and made sure to give him work that was relevant to his research.

Nick's contact with the neighborhood residents was equally engaging. He found one particularly inspiring older woman who tended a huge backyard garden. Sometimes she just stopped her work and sat under a tree with her Bible.

"She seemed so feeble and I wondered how she could do so much work in such an enormous garden," said Nick. "People like her were kind and talkative, and thankful for their gardens. It made me feel happy that I was doing this work."

He met another woman who loved working the garden with neighborhood kids. She and Nick sold vegetables together a couple times at the Eastern Market. Afterwards, she distributed the money to "her kids" in proportion to the time they spent working in the garden.

One unexpected but delightful outcome of Nick's internship was a change in his relationship to food. He was used to eating a lot of fast food; it was cheap and tasted good. But after spending so much time growing vegetables in the city's gardens-and eating the fruits of his labor-Nick decided not to eat fast food and instead to opt for fresh produce.

"When you grow the food, it tastes a little better," he said.

Nick was also moved to learn how to cook. He consulted his mother on recipes for the fresh-grown local produce and found that his favorite meal was pesto, which came from the very basil plants he grew and harvested.

"I've become a pesto addict," he said.

Kale became his other favorite dish. This hearty and tough vegetable that most people overlook is one of the healthiest and most inexpensive of all vegetables. It also has powerful antioxidant properties and is rich in beta-carotene, vitamin K, vitamin C, and calcium.

"The internship definitely got me eating kale, which I wouldn't have otherwise touched," said Nick. "Now I love it and have learned how to cook it by steaming it."

When Nick returned to college last fall, he shared his new insights on food with his housemates. He taught them which vegetables were in season, which ones were Michigan-grown, and, of course, they learned how to enjoy pesto and kale.

For Nick, gardening and eating fresh fruits and vegetables has become a way to live a more sustainable lifestyle. "Everyone can have a backyard garden," he said, "or they can go to the farmer's market."

Now that he is graduated, Nick eventually plans to attend law school to become either a public defender or an environmental lawyer. Whatever he ends up doing, however, he knows he'll "definitely have a garden."

Urban Agriculture as a Career Path

2009-06-15T17:01:00.004-04:00

“I want to be an urban farmer,” said Tom Howe, 19, a freshman at Wayne State University. “I want to start a community garden in some kind of ecovillage with farmers and chefs.”

This may seem an unusual career goal for a young man of the twenty-first century, let alone one from Birmingham, an upscale middle class suburb of Detroit. It’s also counter-intuitive that a major university located in the middle of the cultural center could offer Howe a means to his aspirations.

But Howe is a member of WSU’s Sustainable Food Systems Education and Engagement in Detroit or “SEED Wayne” for short, a program that was instituted last May.

SEED Wayne calls for a critical assessment of the conventional food system and its relationship to the health of local communities, economies, environments, and cultures, said Kami Pothukuchi, associate professor of geography and urban planning at WSU and the founder of the largest inner-city campus with a comprehensive food systems program that is not run by an agriculture school.

“SEED Wayne also challenges students and others to examine the broader implications of their food choices,” she said.

For example, Pothukuchi teaches how a “community-based food system” revolves around local farmers, processors and distributors who produce fresh and value-added products.

Pothukuchi, who is among a handful of professional urban planners who see local agriculture and urban farming as a valuable tool for regional economic development, said that community-based agriculture has the potential for creating jobs, developing small business entrepreneurships and keeping precious dollars in the community.

“Michigan has the second most diverse agriculture in the United States [with 150 crops],” she said. “We could add another $2.58 billion to the state’s economy if we increased production of local food by another 10 percent.”

Consequently, SEED Wayne is dedicated to contributing to building a sustainable food system on campus and in the Detroit area, said Pothukuchi. It works with a number of community partners to promote food security, urban agriculture, farm-to-institution programs, and food planning and policy development.

Among its partners are the Ford Mother Company Fund, which contributed $100,000, The Henry Ford, AVI Foodsystems, Inc. (WSU dining service), Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, City Connect Detroit (funding opportunities service). Other partners include members of the Detroit Agricultural Network, a collection of organizations that promotes the city’s urban gardens such as Greening of Detroit, Forgotten Harvest (food rescue service), the Capuchin Soup Kitchen and Earthworks.

Howe’s first exposure to the city’s urban gardens occurred at Earthworks when he volunteered to work in its 1,300-square-foot greenhouse as part of his high school service requirement while he was a student at the University of Detroit-Jesuit. The greenhouse produces and distributes more than 100,000 vegetable seedlings for the city’s 355 backyard, community, and school gardens.

Earthworks was started in 1997 by Brother Rick Samyn after he noticed that the poor were buying their food at gas stations, and kids were calling Coke and chips a meal. He began a small garden on a vacant lot and two years later developed six other lots by removing debris and regenerating the soil with compost.

Today the gardens supply fresh, organic produce for the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, which prepares 2,000 meals per day. They also provide 25 million pounds of food a year, equivalent to 65,000 meals per day to the Gleaners Community Food Bank, another Capuchin spin-off.

As a student at WSU, Howe still volunteers at Earthworks once a month, but he also helps to grow and sell vegetables at the WSU farmers market which operates on the fourth Wednesday during the summer months.

“I love seeing people and vendors talking together [at the farmers market],” said Howe.

Senior Kristina Stonehill, 22, an English and anthropology major, decided to participate in SEED Wayne’s garden program because a friend recruited her. As a commuter school, WSU students need to find a reason to stay on campus after they finish their classes, she said, and learning how to grow herbs and vegetables is a good reason.

The Warrior Demo Garden (named after the university’s mascot) provides fresh produce for the campus cafeterias as well as the city’s food assistance programs.

Students volunteer to maintain the garden on Wednesdays (5 to 6 p.m.) and Saturday mornings (10 to 11 a.m.). They use the garden as a means of informing and recruiting curious passersby about SEED Wayne’s programs and principles.

“SEED Wayne is really accepting of anyone who wants it,” said Stonehill. “It’s not an exclusive club.”

Moreover, gardening for Stonehill has become a way of getting dirty, being outside and watching vegetables grow—quite a satisfying combination of activities to complement a busy academic and work schedule.

“It’s also a nice problem solving exercise where I learn not to be frustrated that the tomatoes are not as big as I want them or that I find bugs on the squash plants,” she said.
“And knowing how to eat and learning how to grow your own food allows you to cut your food costs.”

Will Ahee, 20, also began gardening at Earthworks when he was a student at U of D-Jesuit. He is now a junior in environmental science and Pothukuchi’s assistant in charge of SEED Wayne.

“Urban students who feel cut off from nature are finding that food has become a vehicle to re-connect with it,” he said. “Gardens allow people to serve but they also help people share their knowledge and connect with others.”

One of the unique aspects of SEED Wayne, especially pertinent to a city like Detroit, is its social justice mission. Detroit has the distinction of being the nation’s poorest big city where nearly 33 percent of the residents live below the federal poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (2004).

“Healthy food needs to be available to all people, said Ahee. “It is a fundamental right,”

Ahee said he could have gone to Michigan State University to learn sustainable agriculture practices, but he was attracted to Detroit where there is so much economic struggle and not much access to healthy food.

“I knew I wanted to give service,” said Ahee, “but I also wanted something that would have lasting change. Helping someone learn how to grow food does it for me.”

WSU students are emblematic of today’s growing national trend where young people are looking for ways to make a difference in their world. While their parents were more interested in political movements, this generation is more interested in personal action where individuals can get involved in doing something.

The future of the environment is college students’ particular concern and SEED Wayne is helping to provide its students with opportunities to learn about and experiment with sustainable food production.

This article appeared in Energy Bulletin on June 15, 2009.

Back to the “Old Normal” of Domesticity

2009-05-17T23:01:00.001-04:00

This year I decided to learn how to garden.

My resolve wasn't just a notion for a new pastime or a move toward hip liberalism. Rather, it was my response to global warming and in particular, the depletion of fossil fuels, which has a direct effect on our food system.

The crops we grow and the way we grow them is determined by oil and oil by-products. Artificial fertilizers and chemical pesticides are made from oil just as farm equipment and irrigation systems are powered by it. Trucks transport our food an average 1,500 miles while fruit and other perishables travel in airplanes. Refrigeration provides storage for dairy, meat and produce that require electricity made from fossil fuels. Processed foods, which account for three-quarters of global food sales by price, are manufactured with oil.

The industrial food system consumes ten calories of fossil-fuel energy for every calorie of food energy produced (www.oildepletionprotocol.org). Such inefficiency hasn’t mattered before because cheap fuel has freed us from the “drudgery” of growing and cooking our own food. Nevertheless, the pervasive use of oil not only makes life on earth unsustainable, its low-cost, convenience and accessibility have led us to assume that someone is always there to feed us. This is the height of dependency, which disconnects us from our food, says Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton in their new book, A Nation of Farmers.

The days of high-priced oil appear to be dormant right now, considering that it was almost thrice the cost last summer. Oil prices are down now because the world economy is stalled. But prices are bound to go back up as the cheap easy-to-get oil becomes more difficult and more expensive to extract. Prices will also rise because less oil is being produced.

Consider that 54 out of 65 oil-producing nations and 400 of the largest oil fields are in decline. Indonesia withdrew its membership from OPEC in 2008 because it became a net importer of oil; Mexico is expected to stop exporting its oil by 2014 (Association for the Study of Peak Oil and the International Energy Agency).

Oil price increases have occurred for many reasons: drought in many grain-producing countries; biofuels have depleted grain stockpiles; increased demand for oil from Asia’s expanding middle class; and the cost of the global industrial agriculture system.

The high cost of oil is affecting world food prices and availability. Last year U.S. prices increased 20-30 percent with several other consequences:

· Costco rationed flour, rice, cooking oil and other staples so that supplies would not run out
· One out of 11 Americans need food stamps while in Michigan and Washington, D.C. the rate is one out of seven
· Seasonal malnutrition appeared among lower class families in the northern United States in 2007 because they spent money on heating oil in winter rather than on food
· 30 million Americans can’t afford a basic, nutritious diet while more than 8 million children know hunger and 20 million are in danger of it.

High oil prices affected the rest of the world as well:

· Haiti’s food prices increased 65 percent
· Food riots took place in Bangladesh, Mexico, Ivory Coast, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Thailand, the Philippines, Peru, Indonesia, Bolivia, Ethiopia
· The United Nations reported that food shortages were in danger of destabilizing 33 nations (including nuclear-Pakistan, Mexico, nuclear-North Korea, nuclear-India, Egypt, South Africa)
· Middle class people in many nations opted for food rather than medical care
· Elderly women in Paris fought over discarded produce.

But what’s to come is dire.

“Soaring food prices and their impact on hunger, malnutrition and development threaten to push 100 million people further into poverty,” said Robert B. Zoellick president of the World Bank Group. “For more than 2 billion people, high food prices are now a matter of daily struggle.”

To address these problems, Astyk and Newton advocate the return to small, sustainable farms, which was Thomas Jefferson’s idea long ago. They are calling for “100 million farmers and 200 million cooks.”

This seems a severe and incomprehensible scenario given that farmers comprise only 2 percent of our population and many people don’t cook anymore. However, household gardens can be a good start toward a new way of life that can not only provide a bounty of free food but encourage the desire to cook and eat it.

This year I planted three tomato plants, one pepper, one eggplant and four different herbs in a couple big pots on my patio. To learn how to grow and harvest vegetables, I’m volunteering at a local, subsistence farm once a week. Our neighborhood is planting an herb garden and later this summer we’ll hold a couple canning parties.

These are small steps but what I’m discovering at the outset of my gardening venture is my changing relationship to food. It truly takes a different kind of effort and conviction to get down in the dirt on my hands and knees to plant and weed, especially when it involves new aches and pains in my aging body. I also feel a new sense of accomplishment and joy in seeing newly-planted rows upon rows of raspberry bushes and mulched potato plants—with more vegetables to come! Caring for my seedlings before they are transplanted is bringing out my nurturing side.

In less than a month, gardening is also connecting me to Nature in a more intense way compared to enjoying walks in the woods in L.L. Bean wear. My thinking is being transformed at the visceral level about where food comes from, how it’s produced and what it means to me.

Meanwhile, my relationship with neighbors and fellow locavores is taking a turn back into the “old normal” of domesticity that focuses on care of the home front—the original Greek meaning of the word, economics. Domesticity was something I had always avoided because of my ambition to pursue a professional career and urban lifestyle. However, as the era of cheap energy gradually becomes a thing of the past—regardless of the promises of the alternative energy proponents—it is obvious to me that growing food will become an imperative to survival and not just an experiment in sustainability or the opportunity to eat fresh, good-tasting, local produce.

As new endeavors go, gardening has filled me with excitement, curiosity and a new sense of optimism that I can impact my own future, assert my independence from food megacorporations and get closer to Nature.

Restaurateurs find local food advantageous to bottom line

2009-04-16T20:14:00.005-04:00

Local sourcing and organic foods are among the top 20 hottest trends for 2009 for restaurants and it’s no wonder.

People want tasty, clean, farm-fresh fruit and vegetables from farmers they know and they want to support their local communities and businesses, according to the National Restaurant Association (NRA).

Accommodating these “philosophy-driven” desires would actually help establish a “community-based food system” where small, independent farmers grow and sell their produce at farmer’s markets, farm stands, supermarkets, specialty food shops and restaurants and work with a network of food processors and distributors.

Such a food system was in place 50 years ago but it has been systematically broken down in favor of an “industrialized food system” designed to increase production and provide the nation with cheap, plentiful and easily accessible food. The United States became a top food producer in the world as a result but problems with food quality as well as food safety and security have developed. The number of general farmers and the destruction of their close-knit rural communities have also resulted. However, change is coming and restaurateurs may help lead the way.

Nationwide, the food industry generated $566 billion in sales in 2008 as one of the country’s largest employers with 13 million employees in 945,000 locations, reports the NRA. In Michigan, restaurant jobs in 16,565 eating-and-drinking places represent 9.9 percent of the state’s total workforce of 4.4 million.

And out of a total GDP of $381 billion, agriculture is the state’s second largest industry pulling in $63.7 billion annually compared to $68.4 billion from manufacturing, according to the Michigan Department of Agriculture (MDA) and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

However, a community-based food system has a long way to go before it becomes part of the mainstream and this affects restaurants in many ways.

In deciding whether or not to purchase locally grown foods, an Iowa State Extension (ISUE) study found that restaurant operators must consider:
• seasonality and availability of products
• adequate supply to meet needs of the restaurant
• product packaging and labeling to meet safety regulations
• ease and efficiency of ordering and payment

Currently, many chefs are getting their local food by driving to the farms or by having the farmers deliver fresh products to them because there is little infrastructure available to them to provide their needs, said Jason Gollan, president of Gollan and Company, a Frankfort consulting firm that specializes in local food marketing strategies.

Consequently, distributors are popping up all over the country. Cherry Capital Foods, for example, is trying to establish a regional system in the Grand Traverse area. Meanwhile, Sysco, a $3 billion broad-line distributor, is seeking to provide local foods to its customers as a brand. Last year it sold $1 million in local food in Michigan, said Gollan, “a mere drop in the bucket” but a step in the right direction because they know how to do the job.

The local food system has primarily been a social movement, said Gollan. Policymakers have recently gotten involved and developed various means for start-up businesses. Now businesspeople are seeing the viability of local food and setting up infrastructure to make it happen at a profit and with greater accessibility.

Regions like the state’s northwest are also rebuilding their local economies by forming partnerships among businesspeople, economic developers, schools, grocers, restaurateurs and food retailers, reported the Great Lakes Bulletin News Service.

State initiaitves, like the MDA’s Agricultural Innovation Program, provide yet another opportunity for local economic development. This competitive grant seeks to establish, retain, expand, attract or develop value-added processing and production operations in Michigan through innovative financing assistance to processors, agribusinesses, producers, local units of government and legislatively-authorized commodity boards in Michigan.

Organic food producers contribute to changing the food system. As more people prefer organics, organic farming represents a profitable alternative for local economic growth and sustainable agriculture since farmers tend to sell to local markets. More acreage is also dedicated to organic farming. From 1997 to 2005, the number of U.S. certified organic acres grew by 63 percent, while Michigan certified organic farmland increased by 166 percent.

In actuality, the number of industrialized farms converting to organic farming methods remains steady, but small. Michigan’s 45,500 certified organic acres comprise only 0.4 percent of the state’s total farmland and 1 percent of the total 4,000,000 certified organic acres in the country, according to the Michigan Organic Farm and Food Alliance (MOFFA). But the potential for growth is there, especially when organic food processors/handlers are figured into the economic mix. The USDA reports that there were over 3,000 organic-certified facilities nationwide in 2004, with 41 percent of those located on the Pacific Coast and almost 800 in California alone.

Local organic food is admittedly more expensive than food from large, industrialized farms, but organic advocates claim that prices in the industrialized food system are cheap because their true cost omits governmental price supports, direct payments or tax breaks and road infrastructure.

All these efforts have barely dented the present industrialized food system. Michigan residents, for example, spend $26 billion on food with only 10 percent coming from the state’s farmers, according to a 2001 MLUI study.

“Michigan has the second most diverse agriculture in the United States [with 150 crops],” said Kami Pothukuchi, associate professor of urban planning at Wayne State University. “We could add another $2.58 billion to the state’s economy if the state’s residents diverted 10 percent of their current food dollars (including eating out) on Michigan-sourced foods.”

The deeply-entrenched industrialized food system made up of a handful of “mega-corporations” that control food production, processing, distribution and preparation is standing in the way of change, she said

This system was developed in the 1950s when most American businesses were creating systems for mass production and economies of scale. Because volume is critical to the profitability of this system, farming methods developed to support a large-scale, energy-intensive monoculture that uses huge amounts of water and chemicals for herbicides, insecticides, and fertilizers. Tons of animal waste products also accumulate and pollute land, water and air because factory farming methods keep animals indoors and free of disease instead of allowing them to graze in pastures.

Actually, the cost of the industrialized food system outweighs its benefits. For example, most food in the industrialized system ends up in supermarkets after traveling an average 1,300 miles to get there. Fruits and vegetables may spend seven to fourteen days in transit. So freshness and taste are sacrificed for the products’ ability to travel.

Transporting products has been possible through low-cost fuel. However, when oil reached $144 a barrel last summer, the expense incurred over such long distances proved problematic. World food prices averaged an increase of 43 percent over the past year, while the Consumer Price Index estimates that U.S. retail food prices increased in 2007 by 4 percent, the largest spike in 17 years—with more expected to come.

Meanwhile, restaurants will continue to play a major role in developing a community’s economy as nearly every community has at least one restaurant and most communities have many food-and-drink establishments, said a recent ISUE report. Restaurants and producers are forming stronger connections with their customers and obtaining premium prices for their products.

The time is ripe for change—and profits!

This article appeared in Energy Bulletin on Thursday, April 16, 2009.

From Kalamazoo to Kathmandu

2009-03-30T07:52:00.014-04:00

On Thanksgiving Day 2001 Nalina Quraeshi was preparing dinner for 30 family members when she received word that her father had died in Nepal. Her two-day trip found the country suddenly beset with tragedy—and world headlines.

The prince destined to assume the throne shot and killed nine other members of the royal family, including his father, the king. The government declared the country in a state of emergency, suspended all civil rights and imposed a curfew restricting all movement after dark.

“It was a horrible time to go back,” said Quareshi, whose mission it was to get her mother safely out of the country.

A similar thing happened in 1965 when Quraeshi’s family was returning home after being in the United States for six years. The journey to Nepal included a transit stop in India, which was in the midst of a war with Pakistan over the Kashmir issue, a dispute that had been brewing since partition in 1947.

“There were sirens and bombs. My sisters and I had to put cotton in our teeth to keep from making noise. We sat in the darkness during these air raids because we had to turn off all the lights. This was my re-introduction to Nepal [at age nine].”

Quraeshi, 52, was born in Kathmandu, Nepal, but because of her father’s work as a government diplomat for Nepal and later the United Nations, she lived in New York, Washington, D.C., Bangkok, Rome, Paris, Darjeeling and Delhi prior to turning age 21.

“Before I could identify with any one ethnic group, my family moved to a different place,” said Quraeshi. As a result, her parents taught her and her siblings that people are all the same, everything is sacred and everyone deserves respect.

For example, as a graduate student in sociology at Michigan State University, Quraeshi met her future husband, WMU marketing professor, Zahir Quraeshi, a Pakistani Muslim. Meanwhile, her three sisters are married to a Nepali Hindu, a German Protestant, and an Italian Catholic. Her husband’s sister married a Frenchman and their daughter, who is Philippino by birth, live in England. Her brother is single and lives in Boston.

“My family is a mini-United Nations,” said Quraeshi, “but we all come together from all over the world to my house at Thanksgiving to give thanks for our many blessings.”

Although Quraeshi spent the first half of her life all over the world, she has remained in Kalamazoo for the second half to raise her two sons, teach Non-Western World Studies at WMU, and pursue her doctorate at MSU.

“My sons’ experience is so different from my own,” she said. Even so, she has made certain that they grow up as global citizens. That hasn’t been difficult.

Quraeshi’s spouse, Zahir, has been a steady voice for globalism at WMU for the past three decades. During his sabbatical year the family lived in Malaysia.

Her mother, who is Hindu, and her mother-in-law, who is Muslim, live with the family, so Quraeshi does not cook beef or pork out of respect for their religious beliefs. Because her husband and many friends are Muslim, she does not display any religious idols in her home even though Nepalese religious art typically displays beautiful godly faces.

Although she grew up a Hindu, Quraeshi practices its intellectual and simple living qualities rather than its ceremonial rituals. However, she feels comfortable among people from any religion.

“I can reconcile Islam very well,” said Quraeshi, whose sons are Muslim. “Actually, I have tolerance for all religions and think of myself as a global citizen.”

Being a global citizen can be confusing. When asked where her home is, Quraeshi finds that she must think twice before answering.

“Does that mean where I’m living now, where I was born, where I have spent my life, or where my family currently resides?” she asked.

Actually, Quraeshi said she feels at home in any place because she identifies with and adapts to whatever culture she happens to be.

Some people believe that world travel alone makes them global citizens but Quraeshi disagrees. Those who remain “unilateral” (nationalistic to their homeland) or “bilateral” (they claim the values of both their native and their adopted countries) are not global citizens.

Instead, global citizenship has to do with one’s identification with the entire world, she said. Accepting diversity rather than fearing it provides people with a “richness” that gives them more options for study, travel, business and meeting others who have different ways of life.

However, Quraeshi admits that a peripatetic lifestyle has its downsides.

“I have friends everywhere in the world,” she said, “but the hard part is not having the stability of childhood friends to grow up with all my life.”

Recently, she has discovered a way to fill this void: by returning to Nepal.

Since the Maoists’ insurgency in the country in 1996, rural Nepalis have fled to the cities and become “urban squatters.” Village people from Bhutan and Tibet have left their homes as political and economic refugees. Consequently, Kathmandu has degenerated into an impoverished place with masses of people who have no jobs.

“There is so much that one can do,” said Quraeshi. “And a whole generation is missing. In every family someone has fled the country because of the violence. Parents stay but send their children overseas for an education.”

Recently, Quraeshi began to find ways of implementing several rural development programs and experiments her father had envisioned years ago. She is due to return to Nepal in April and May to continue this work.

Quraeshi has also discovered that like her, many of her high school friends have returned to Nepal, too. One of them runs a conservation program, another starts schools for the homeless, another works with children who have grown up in prisons while yet another rescues young girls from the rampant Asian sex trade.

Over the years many members of Quraeshi’s family have been helping Nepal from afar by raising money for scholarships and supporting the Arya Samaj schools, Hindu schools that emphasize values, culture and religion. However, some are looking for projects that allow them more hands-on involvement. For example, one sister’s husband is a cancer surgeon who will donate his services for two months.

Nalini Quraeshi embodies what it means to be a global citizen. She has lived among numerous nationalities, cultures and religions all over the world and speaks six different languages. Now, she is doing something special for her native land.

GLOBAL Cook
Nalina Quraeshi, known as gourmet cook among her friends, plans her family’s meals with an international flair and pragmatic determination. Last week she made the following dishes:

Monday – Mexican eight-layered fiesta with guacamole, frijoles, ground beef and
tortillas and corn salsa
Tuesday – Pad Thai with vegetables
Wednesday – Nepali-Indian lentils with rice and vegetables
Thursday – homemade Italian focaccia with roasted vegetables and pesto
Friday – Mediterranean couscous salad and 15-bead soup with vegetables
Saturday – Italian scallops and fettuccine in tomato wine sauce
Sunday – Nepali Momos (steamed potstickers) with tomato cilantro chutney

“I like to eat but I don’t like to cook,” said Quraeshi. “And no one else in my family cooks, so I have to do it.”

She likes to entertain, however, and typically has 30 family or friends over for a meal.

“I love it but this is nothing,” she said. “At home it’s common to have 70 to 80 people for dinner.”

MORE ON NEPAL

Nepal is generally regarded as an obscure but beautiful, peaceful, exotic Shangri-la kingdom on the “roof-top of the world.” It is the home of Mt. Everest and is a great tourist destination for hiking and mountain climbing. There are also 10 UNESCO-designated world heritage sites, seven of them in Kathmandu.

Nepal started out as a Hindu kingdom, but it is now a secular federal republic with nine different religions including Hindu, Buddhism, Islam and Kirant. Its much-loved monarchy was seen as a reincarnation of God until 2001 when the prince designated to ascend to the throne massacred his family.

The 29.5 million population is comprised of several different ethnic groups who speak at least eight different languages. This 147,181 square kilometer landlocked country is slightly larger than Arkansas.

Since 1996 Nepal has been marked by violence during a ten-year Maoist insurgency. Elections in May 2008 led to a stunning victory of Maoist party, the overthrow of a 240-year-old monarchy and the creation of a new republic with the pressing task of framing a new constitution by 2010. The government platform is to give voice to indigenous, disenfranchised groups in the hill regions and the far west. It remains to be seen how things will work out.

This article appeared in the Kalamazoo Gazette City Life section on Saturday, March 28, 2009.

World-Traveling Kalamazooan Goes to Dubai

2009-03-21T06:52:00.010-04:00

Susan Fletcher never dreamed of being a world traveler let alone an employee for an $87 billion global health-care company. After all, she didn't even have a medical or life science background.

In early January, Fletcher, 50, a born and bred Kalamazooan, was on her way to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, to set up a team to sell and install Pyxis automation systems, which manage medication and supplies in acute-care hospitals.

However, she didn't get on the road to UAE until she looked beyond a "normal" career path.

After 10 years of dead-end office jobs, Fletcher realized that her self-motivating spirit needed nurturing, so she went to Western Michigan University and completed a degree in business information systems at age 32.

"I was just bored and underestimated my abilities," she said about her decision. "As women, we think we need credentials. That's why I got my degree as a nontraditional student. Our mothers came from traditional backgrounds, but our generation, the baby boomers, discovered we could choose what we wanted to do with our lives."

After graduation, Fletcher thought she would try for a job as a pharmaceutical representative at the Upjohn Co.; however, she didn't think competing with MBA graduates six to eight years younger than she was and managers her same age was going to work.

She became a pharmacy technician at Bronson Hospital to become familiar with medications so she could eventually apply for a sales job at another pharmaceutical company. Her manager must have seen something special in Fletcher because he advised her to "think bigger" and go into computer sales.

A year later Fletcher applied for jobs at both IBM and Pyxis, but after nine interviews in seven days, she chose Pyxis.

At first, she trained hospital nurses on the use of the automation system in a territory that included five Midwestern states. In nine months she received her first promotion to head up a team of specialists to install a newly developed product from Cardinal Health, a company that merged with Pyxis to automate medical supplies as well as medications. A year later she was promoted again to lead a sales project in San Francisco. She yearned for her own territory, however, and soon was given Hawaii, where she worked for the next four years.

Pyxis then decided to have Fletcher cover Hawaii and Las Vegas, Palm Springs, and Orange County, which she did for the next five years -- and won the President's Club Award for meeting her sales quotas.

This was all pretty heady stuff for Fletcher; however, the stress of fulfilling corporate sales quotas took its toll. Something else was nagging at her, too. She wanted to live in Italy, learn the language and change her life. So in 2001 she quit Pyxis, bought a home near Florence and became an expatriate.

An expatriate or "expat" is a person who temporarily or permanently resides in a country and culture other than her own.

"I had the desire to explore life, especially after being in corporate America for 20 years. I knew there had to be more," she said.

Italy was her respite, but unlike Frances Mayes in the popular book and film, Under the Tuscan Sun, Fletcher did not go there looking for a man. Instead, it was Florence that had captured her heart.

"I love Florence because it's beautiful. It has exquisite culture in its music, language, architecture and history. The food is fabulous. And when I'm flying into the city and see the Duomo (cathedral), my heart sings."

However, it wasn't long before the Pyxis distributor in Spain tracked her down and urged her to work with their colleagues in Pisa, Italy, for six months. After that, Pyxis wanted to extend Fletcher's contract for six more months to work on selling installation systems in Rome and Genoa.

The next, year the Pyxis distributor in Pisa and the vice president of Cardinal International (Pyxis and Cardinal Health merged in 1996) assigned her as a consultant to support sales and operations in Europe and the Middle East. Fletcher complied but found her travel schedule too grueling. She wanted to stay in one place, which turned out to be London, England, where she lived for a year. Last year she was asked to build a Pyxis team in the UAE, Oman and Bahrain.

While Fletcher's worldwide lifestyle may seem an oddity to people who lead more stationary lives, she said that she really is not that unusual.

"It seems that every family has one member who is more adventurous than all the others," said Fletcher. "In my family, I am it."

Fletcher has two brothers and two sisters who live in Kalamazoo and two brothers who live out of state. She also has friends of all ages all over the world. It's the diversity of cultures that she enjoys the most living overseas, something she can't get living in the United States.

Fletcher is looking forward to life and her new home in Dubai. She says it is the most progressive country in the Middle East, the language is all in English and there are a lot of expatriates there from all over the world.

Her territory will be smack dab in the middle of the volatile Persian Gulf region, but she has no fears or worries.

"A lot of hospital administrators are expats," said Fletcher. "UAE is a good place to be. Workers are treated well, and the country is very Westernized."

Despite all her travel adventures, Fletcher's home base remains her mother's house in
in Kalamazoo, and her mother, Beverly McDonald, visits her wherever in the world she is.

This article appeared in the Kalamazoo Gazette City Life section on March 21, 2009.

Hot, Flat and Bothered

2009-03-15T23:01:00.008-04:00

Thomas Friedman has done it again. He has taken a global situation, this time it’s climate change, and set out to educate the public about how we got there and what we can do about it. However, in his explanation, the self-described “somber optimist” inadvertently ends up salving readers with the expectation that technology will save us and we can go on with our lives as usual.

Hot, Flat and Crowded focuses on the threats and opportunities of climate change in this new age that he calls the Energy-Climate Era (ECE), which begins now.

Friedman is an engaging storyteller who can skillfully elucidate complex ideas with pithy phrases. For example, in the book’s title, “hot” refers to the earth’s rising temperatures due to an overdose of carbon emissions from large-scale manufacturing, the loss of forests, urban sprawl, the extraction of resources and the large store of solid waste from animals and humans.

“Flat” refers to how more of the world’s people have entered the middle class, a decidedly good development in the quest to overcome poverty. However, he says, middle class lifestyles encourage people to acquire more consumer goods, which use up more fossil fuels and thus contribute to more carbon emissions.
“Crowded” refers to the ever-increasing world population. Today, it stands at 6.7 billion. By mid-century demographers estimate it will be 9 billion with the greatest increases in countries that are least able to sustain a larger population. It is these countries that have the potential for violence, civil unrest and extremism.

To mitigate these interconnecting problems, Friedman advocates an all-out effort to “mobilize the most effective and prolific system for transformational innovation and commercialization of new products.” Americans, in particular, are well poised to develop and dominate such a market by creating a demand for clean energy. We could also put our people to work by encouraging innovators to invent renewable energy generators and by enlisting blue collar workers to be “green collar workers” to make and service these products. Unfortunately, the United States is not doing this, says Friedman, but China is. And unless we get going, we will miss an opportunity to “out-green” the Chinese and sell the world our new, green technology.

What prevents America from getting on board the renewable energy train is our reluctance to invest the necessary funds for research and development. Friedman says that supplying these funds would be expensive up front, but the benefits of converting to a modern and efficient energy infrastructure would save us a lot of money in the long term.

Another thing stopping us is some political leaders’ doubts about whether climate change is caused by humans or Nature—so they block R&D funds. The $787 billion stimulus package recently signed by President Obama was a big victory for change because it did designate nearly $20 billion for renewable energy and $11 billion to modernize the U.S. electrical grid. But the nagging question remains: where will lawmakers find more funds in the future.

Meanwhile, Friedman deftly illustrates how our oil addiction is encouraging petropolitical dictators and strengthening “the most intolerant, antimodern, anti-Western, anti-women’s rights, and antipluralistic strain of Islam—the strain propagated by Saudi Arabia.” He reminds readers that fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudis for this very reason.

Another complication to our response to climate change is Friedman’s contention that if we want to maintain our present way of life, “we will have to leverage and exploit our intellectual resources through innovation and technology.” Here he reveals his basic worldview: “we as a global society need more and more growth, because without growth there is no human development and those in poverty will never escape it.”

While it is nice that Friedman is concerned about the poor, he believes that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” just as President John F. Kennedy once urged. After nearly 50 years of operating on this assumption, we have seen the gap between rich and poor widen and the utter and insidious collapse of our economy.

Friedman’s statements about growth show him to be what energy experts call a “cornucopian.” A cornucopian believes that there are few intractable limits to growth and that the world can provide a practically limitless abundance of natural resources.

Friedman conducted extensive research to prepare this book, but he leaves readers with a curious omission about our energy future: “peak oil.”

According to Energy Bulletin (www.energybulletin.net), “peak oil” refers to the high point in the rate of global oil production. Because oil is a finite, nonrenewable natural resource, once we use up half of the world’s total reserves, oil production will begin to decline. It is important to recognize that a peak in production does not mean that we are running out of oil. It signals that we are running out of cheap oil. We got a taste of that future last summer when oil reached $147 per barrel and gasoline topped over $4 a gallon.

No one knows when we will hit the “peak” and begin to decline so the urgency to do something about it depends one’s estimate of remaining oil reserves. The Cambridge Energy Research Associates, one of the world’s leading energy consulting firms, estimates we have 20 to 30 years before reaching peak. Many peak oil theorists (as seen in the documentary, “The End of Suburbia”) believe oil could peak as early as 2010.

Perhaps the most disturbing word on peak oil comes from what is commonly known as the Hirsch Report, sponsored and published in 2005 by the U.S. Energy Department. It states that “the economic, social, and political costs [of peak oil] will be unprecedented.”
Organizations like the Post Carbon Institute and the Rocky Mountain Institute are working hard to inform and organize policymakers and the public to “understand and respond to the challenges of fossil fuel depletion and climate change.” Unfortunately, they are unable to capture much attention from the media or the policymakers so the public stays largely uninformed about peak oil.

Well, in the end people will believe what they want to believe and there are always plenty of data around to substantiate whatever position makes them feel comfortable—including very smart and influential people like Thomas Friedman. But readers must ask themselves: why is America willing to gamble on the possibility that we have more time rather than less time not only to take care of climate change but to curb our dependence on oil to fuel our economy?

This article appeared in Common Dreams on Monday, March 16, 2008.

Opportunity Knocks When It Comes to a Local Food Economy

2009-02-05T20:56:00.003-05:00

The local food movement has the potential for creating jobs, developing small business entrepreneurships and keeping precious dollars in the community.

“As manufacturing jobs decrease, the relative value of activities in the community's food sector increases,” said Dr. Kami Pothukuchi, associate professor of urban planning at Wayne State University.

This is especially good news for Michigan whose economic engine has been dependent on manufacturing, which pulls in $68.4 billion annually compared to agriculture’s $63.7 billion, the state’s second largest industry.

Our food system should revolve around small, polycultural farms that practice sustainable agriculture, preserve regional biodiversity and help build local economies, said Pothukuchi. This is already being done in many ways.

First, people are turning to local food networks like community gardens, food co-ops, Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA), farmers' markets.

Second, more and more people are opting for organic food as a healthy and sustainable alternative—and farmers are catching on. From 1997 to 2005, Michigan certified organic farmland increased by 166 percent, according to the Michigan Organic Farm and Food Alliance (MOFFA). However, these 45,500 acres of certified farmland comprise only 0.4 percent of our state’s total farmland. Organic farmers tend to sell to local markets (within 150 miles) and the potential for growth is there, especially when organic food processors and handlers are figured into the economic mix.

Third, college students across the country are pushing their institutions to support sustainable agriculture by having their cafeterias use food grown by local farmers. Students are also learning how to garden and to consider careers like urban farming. Pothukuchi started an urban garden program at WSU, which is distinguished as the largest inner-city campus with a comprehensive food systems program that is not run by an agriculture school. MSU agriculture students are growing food to supply one of the university’s residence halls.

Some areas of the state are actively recruiting youth for community-based farming careers through hands-on learning situations. The 4-H Entrepreneurs Club in Kalkaska County has youth pick and buy produce at area farms in order to sell it at five different farmers markets. There are similar programs in Detroit and Monroe County.

Fourth, Grand Traverse is rebuilding its local economy by forming partnerships among businesspeople, economic developers, schools, grocers, restaurateurs and food retailers, reported the Great Lakes Bulletin News Service. As these partnerships work to bring more food-related jobs to the area, they not only support local farmers but they also protect precious income-producing farmlands from being overtaken by urban sprawl.

The Michigan Land Use Institute (MLUI) speculates that the Grand Traverse region could stimulate more job growth and entrepreneurship by supporting its 2,229 farms through cooperative efforts like the Food and Farm Network. Moreover, a 2006 MLUI study found that farms could generate 1,889 new jobs across the state and $187 million in new personal income by selling more fresh produce locally.

Fifth, the state can sponsor local economic development with programs like the MDA’s Agricultural Innovation Program. This competitive grant seeks to establish, retain, expand, attract or develop value-added processing and production operations through innovative financing assistance to processors, agribusinesses, producers, local units of government and legislatively-authorized commodity boards in Michigan. Michigan Select is another program that promotes the state’s products with labeling stickers.

Michigan residents spend $26 billion on food with only 10 percent coming from the state’s farmers, according to a 2001 MLUI study.

“Michigan has the second most diverse agriculture in the United States [with 150 crops]. We could add another $2.58 billion to the state’s economy if we increased production of local food by another 10 percent,” said Pothukuchi.

A longer version of this article appeared in Energy Bulletin on February 5, 2009 and Common Dreams on February 6, 2009.

Inauguration Day 2009

2009-01-20T19:56:00.003-05:00

Today Barack Obama will become our president. His inauguration ends the long nightmare of the past eight years and leads us to a new era of self-government.

The excitement across the land is most apparent, especially as yesterday’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Day serendipitously stood adjacent to the inauguration of America’s first Black president.

The meaning of Obama’s ascension to the presidency goes far beyond race, but let me talk about race first.

We have a very bad history with race starting with the importation of Black slaves to do the dirty work of building our country. To own men and women and to treat them like animals was morally wrong. To pull them from their families, their lands and all they knew was to rip history and place from them, two essential elements of a people’s sense of self. The disorientation and grief of those acts affected a whole people down through ages until the mid-1800’s when Black leaders like Frederick Douglas and Sojourner Truth emerged to cut the chains of slavery. These leaders inspired others like Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois in the early 1900s to raise up the social and economic station of Blacks until Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X called on Blacks in the mid-1900s to advance further by pursuing political leadership, voting rights, education, the elimination of Jim Crow laws, jobs with equal pay for equal work. From the efforts of all these people, we come today to the inauguration of Barack Obama.

Today is a significant day for all Americans—Black and white—as we celebrate the “miracle” that happened in November with the election of Barack Obama. It came after eight years of enduring a man who half the country felt was illegitimately selected—twice. It came after a man who presided over the worst terrorist attack in our history and used fear and manipulation as weapons against his own people. He nearly scuttled our civil liberties and our Constitution, he got us into two unnecessary wars, a tremendous national debt and he leaves office with the worst economic situation since the 1930s Depression. Worse yet, this man never acknowledged nor did he ever dream he had this effect on the country as evidence by his last press conference and farewell speech.

This man has left the world in distress, too, because he opted for macho toughness rather than leadership. As a result, we have been delayed eight more years to tackle global warming, to acknowledge resource depletion and the end of cheap energy, to see the degradation of our jobs, our cities, our educational system, our health care system and our national spirit. Instead, he focused on his power, his vacations, his trail bike and his legacy. He risked and tarnished our country’s reputation and he leaves office as a shame and disgrace both to his family and to his country.

Barack Obama represents a new kind of leader. He is self-possessed, reflective, intelligent, able to inspire others. He is trusted by the vast majority of Americans and by people all over the world. Many believe he will tackle problems that have festered for many years and caused the people to grow cynical about their role in shaping government and its policies. However, we must acknowledge that our problems with government started with ourselves when we allowed our leaders to run government for us. We should not be surprised, then, that they caved to moneyed interests, helped destroy the middle class, sent our children into endless wars against invisible enemies and now leave a greater national debt for generations to come. We allowed ourselves to be fooled into “free market capitalism” by our own greed that Ronald Reagan tapped into 30 years ago and which ended in the Bush era as the rapacious, foolish, debilitating policy that it always was.

Now Barack Obama comes forth to begin a new era—and we can all be happy that we helped to elect him. He will grow into the job and the era will define him, and he is undoubtedly the right man at the right time. He will know what to do and how to react. He will be a leader, not a bully, through thoughtful reflection, consultation and action instead of reaction. He will ask us to make sacrifices and we will comply willingly because he will have explained the problem, the consequences and the long-term benefits of such actions. He will move us to go beyond ourselves, to help others because we will understand that by doing so, we will help all citizens and ourselves, too, in re-creating a just and fair and equitable society. He will lead by example instead of by words and oratory. He has already done so and has made great strides in uniting us as well. He will not rule out of fear and dread but out of forthrightness, quiet strength, self-assuredness and confidence in us, the American people.

As a country we have been fortunate to find the leader we needed in a crisis. Over the past eight years I thought God’s blessings had run their course. With President Obama, I believe we have been given another chance. I pray we take it, embrace it, and use it not only to bring up ourselves but to go back to being a beacon for truth, justice and generosity for ourselves and the world that we are meant to be.

Will Allen’s Growing Power Works for the Future

2008-11-18T21:54:00.002-05:00

Ordinary people with good ideas and the ambition to serve others are emerging as our country’s leaders.

Will Allen, 59, founder and director of Growing Power, started an urban garden on the last three available farm acres in Milwaukee. In 16 years he has grown a complex but essential model (www.growingpower.org/headquarters.htm) of community-based agriculture that can feed people healthy, fresh, local food at affordable prices.

But that’s just the window dressing. Hearing this giant of a man (he was a University of Miami basketball star who played pro basketball in Europe for six years) speak humbly and straightforwardly about how he has succeeded AND spread the word about urban agriculture is an enlightening experience. He has a prepared slide show, but he prefers to answer questions from the audience as he goes along. This unusual approach provides a richer and fuller forum for discussion.

“Food is at the very foundation of community development,” says Will whose key to success has been in forming relationships with people in neighborhoods, schools, universities, governments and funding agencies.

“Everyone has to be involved. Everyone!” says Will. “This is a grassroots movement that doesn’t work from the top down, but below the ground.”

Will has worked with Mayor Barrett of Milwaukee as well as Wisconsin Senators Herb Kohl and Russ Finegold and Representative Gwen Moore who have brought home federal monies for urban agriculture.

Even the federal government is recognizing the efficacy of urban gardens by including appropriations for them in the new Farm Bill.

He’s also worked with Jerry Kaufman, professor emeritus of urban and regional planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kaufman is among a handful of urban planners promoting the idea that the local food movement can be a major contributor to a region’s economic development.

Urban agriculture has existed throughout time as a means of feeding people, says Will. Their last great incarnation was during World War II when Americans grew Victory Gardens. Now, with the economic downturn, more and more city people are growing gardens in their neighborhoods, schools and backyards in order to provide themselves with fresh and free organic produce.

Will started out his urban farm as a youth project and it has grown to the point that the Milwaukee Public Schools sponsor garden education for all students in grades K-12. Schools pay a fee for service and Growing Power provides six-week workshops.

“We’ve become their parents,” says Will. “A lot of them are from distressed homes.”

Will recognized that poor, central cities are filled with kids who all too often don’t have much to do. That’s one of the major reasons why they join gangs—for company and sometimes for mere survival. Whenever Will arrives in a neighborhood with a truckload of tools, he says that 40 curious kids appear in no time. They especially like the earthworms.

As altruistic as his motives are for his gardens, Will makes no bones about the necessity for them to be profitable.

“We are a non-profit organization but we need to make money to survive,” says Will.

He runs his organization like a business and proudly claims that it has never ever layed off an employee from his staff of 35.

Will is a man on a mission. You will find him constantly out recruiting urban farmers among the young people he meets through Growing Power’s workshops and programs. He also talks with college students and captures their imaginations with his sustainable farming practices.

He doesn’t talk that much to current farmers, though, because they are more focused on large-scale commodity farming. However, he has spread the word about small-scale urban farming techniques to people in Africa, Eastern Europe and South America. Kenya, Peru—and they’re eating it up.

One of his major projects is with the City of Chicago in downtown Grant Park. His daughter, Erica Allen, heads up that program.

Will grew up on a farm in Maryland where he and his brothers cultivated a garden. His family wasn’t very well off financially but they always had a lot of food available. And they were generous with it, too. He said it wasn’t unusual to find his mother working over a stove with huge pots of home-cooked food ready for 50 people at any time.

Will never expected that he’d turn to farming in his adult life. However, he discovered during his basketball days in Europe that he just couldn’t resist digging around in the soil.

Will is making a difference in the world so much that he has just been awarded the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” which is given to individuals described as creative, bold, energetic and promising of more achievement. The fellows receive no-strings grants of $500,000 over five years.

Will plans to use his money to provide fresh greens to the poor. Such leadership is an inspiration and an example of the kinds of innovations going on among grassroots people to create a new kind of world that is sustainable and more connected to nature.

A Place Where Beauty Matters

2008-08-18T23:45:00.010-04:00

My annual pilgrimage to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival stimulated the thought once again about what it’s like to be in a community that devotes itself to beauty. That beauty matters in a town of Stratford’s size and geography is not only unusual, but it summons a reflection about what beauty entails and why it is important for our lives.

For example, beauty is about having a sense of place.

Stratford, population 30,000, is located in the southern Ontario 90 minutes west of the Toronto metropolis. It sits in the heart of the agricultural belt where farmers raise corn, squash, melons, pumpkins, strawberries and pork while industries make products in advanced manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, high tech and financial services. This strong economic base helps support the Festival and the farms that dot Route 7 make driving there pleasant and picturesque.

The Festival has utilized the town’s name as a mirror of the original theatre of Stratford on Avon in England. For more than 50 years it has provided not only the very best in repertory theatre (including Shakespearean classics, American Broadway musicals, French and British farces, ancient Greek tragedies and native Canadian plays), but the very finest in cuisine, gardening and architecture.

A touch of English haute couture pervades the town partly because of Canada’s historical alliance with England but also because of the number of British Isles nationals who have migrated there. However, Canadians are unpretentious and visitors soon discover that they are appreciated not just for their money but because the locals want to share their town and its amenities with them. In this way, theatre-goers become an integral part of the Stratford community, and they gladly return nearly every year during the April to November season.

Beauty is also about enhancing the interplay between the natural world and the urban environment.

Because Stratford is small, it is easy to get around town by walking. This factor allows visitors to see and appreciate the clean, flower-bedecked streets, tidy shops and vibrant neighborhoods firsthand.

The townspeople have also taken full advantage of the Avon River, which provides a natural setting for leisurely strolls amid the old, leafy trees that line the shore or a paddleboat or pontoon ride on the calm waters. Visitors mingle among young parents out with their babies, youngsters riding their bikes to soccer practice, and retirees with their grandchildren feeding the ducks, geese, gulls and swans with corn seed, not bread! (Actually, a conscientious local girl has made a business of bagging and selling corn seeds to the tourists and residents in order to feed the waterfowl safely.)

A fanciful, little, wooden bridge connects the mainland to an island in the middle of the river where a modest but reverent plaque to the Festival’s founder, Tom Patterson, has been placed.

Upriver is the Gallery Stratford, an architecturally quaint building that formerly served as the city’s water pump station. This small gallery usually features one exhibit on contemporary art and the other on Stratford theatre art. Outside the Gallery is yet another display of the city’s bountiful flowerbeds and a rock garden with a gurgling waterfall surrounded by tall, fragrant pine trees.

On the way back downtown a walk through the town’s neighborhoods presents a variety of vintage red and yellow brick houses with manicured lawns and lovely wildflower gardens.

The downtown commercial district offers all the cultural accoutrements a visitor could imagine: oriental rugs, books, china, antiques, Inuit art, Scottish-ware, Canadian winter-proof clothes, restaurants, pubs, pastry shops, cafés, a chocolatier, juice bars and gift shops. Incidentally, all of these shops are locally-owned and managed so the money stays in town.

Beauty is about paying attention to details.

The Festival’s fashion artists research and design the actors’ elaborate costumes for historical integrity while a full-time wardrobe staff custom fits each actor’s outfit by hand. Master craftsmen carefully construct every table, bowl of fruit, spear, and wagon. Shoemakers cobble all footwear with “mufflers” on the soles to minimize unwanted sounds on the stage. Choreographers carefully plan battle scenes while musicians compose and perform original works with period instruments.

These preparations augment the work of the actors who move across the stage with the poise and grace as they believably and ably portray their characters. This repertory theatre emphasizes acting and staging rather than the usual diet of special effects.

Restaurants throughout town offer a variety of specialties and price ranges, however, the gourmet venue available in Stratford is particularly spectacular. Taste, quality and presentation abound in each exquisite dish. There’s even a gourmet French fries shop! Stratford’s secret is its Chefs School where many local restaurateurs teach and then practice what they preach in their own establishments.

Beauty is about hospitality and good conversation.

Stratford accommodations include hotels and motels in and around town as well as cottages and campgrounds. However, a stay at a bed & breakfast provides a unique experience.

Stratford has become a magnet for retired Canadians who buy an old Edwardian or Queen Anne house, restore it, and rent out rooms for theatre guests. B&B hosts are warm and welcoming and visitors often make repeat stays. Over the years both host and visitor get to know each other and spend time catching up on the year’s events. Of course, B&Bs also offer visitors enriching conversations with their fellow travelers about the plays and restaurants, however, what is particularly interesting is when Canadians and Americans visitors compare notes about U.S. politics.

Beauty is about leisure.

Taking time away from the regular work and home routine is a state of mind that enables people to do the things they like to do without guilt or fear. Leisure also tends to have a slowing down effect that allows them to be comfortable spending time alone or with another. As a result, visitors at Stratford can easily indulge themselves in contemplation and quiet reflection without the noisy distractions of modern life.

Finally, beauty is about feeling safe.

In this post-9/11 era where security is tantamount to breathing, it soon becomes apparent in Stratford that anyone can walk down the street at any time of the day or night without the fear of being attacked or surveiled. For Americans, such a feeling is a refreshing luxury and becoming almost a forgotten memory.

All of these elements work together to illustrate that beauty DOES make a difference in people’s lives even if it only entails a short visit to a special place like Stratford once a year. We need such reminders. Even more, we need to bring such examples of good living to our own cities and towns so that we can have them all year long!

This article appeared in Common Dreams.org on Tuesday, August 19, 2008.

Agrarian Revival at the End of Cheap Oil

2008-07-30T15:54:00.008-04:00

This paper was prepared by Maynard Kaufman for the Rural Issues Workshop at the Green Party Convention in Chicago on July 13, 2008. Maynard is a professor emeritus of religion at Western Michigan University. He started a small farm outside Bangor, Michigan, in the 1970s. He recently built a house that is completely off the grid through solar and wind energy.

Let me suggest a context for our discussion of agrarian revival by describing the two major transformations of our food system. The second transformation will be upon us in a few years as rising prices for energy will curtail the industrial food system, and I will explain this in a few minutes. But first I want to describe the first transformation which occurred during the twentieth century. This was the time when the availability of cheap energy made the industrial food system possible. The abundance of cheap energy gave us an abundance of cheap food, but not without a whole lot of serious environmental impacts. As Greens we are aware of environmental impacts, but I want to review some of these impacts so we have some basis for affirming the changes that will soon be upon us.

The food system in its totality is the largest industry in this country and uses the most energy. Oil is used in tractors on the farm, in trucks for transportation of food, in factories for the processing of food, and to manufacture chemicals used for pesticides and fertilizers; coal is used to generate electricity for refrigeration, cooking, lighting in restaurants and supermarkets; and natural gas, which is also in short supply, is used to manufacture anhydrous ammonia which has replaced manure as nitrogen fertilizer.

These are only a few examples of how energy is used in the industrial food system. The average family of four that buys its food uses more energy in the food they buy than in the car they drive. The burning of fossil fuels such as coal (for electricity), along with oil and natural gas, has long been recognized as a source of air pollution with acid rain. More recently we have learned to recognize the otherwise innocent gas, carbon dioxide, as a pollutant that helps to create the greenhouse effect which may lead to less hospitable climate.

Other environmental impacts of the industrial food system include soil erosion, wasteful use of water, run-off from excessive fertilizer use, manure pollution in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Most of these costs are "externalized" into the environment, not included in the price. Thus food is cheap in America because many costs are externalized. The annual subsidy of 39 billion dollars to the oil industry is not included in the price of food. And the cost of war to secure access to oil is also externalized to be paid by our children.

There are several reasons why we need to be aware of the problems in the industrial food system. First, it is designed to make money and produces food only for that reason. In his new book, The End of Food, Paul Roberts devotes a whole chapter to how cost-cutting measures have made food unsafe to eat. Second, the easy availability of food has changed us from producers to consumers, and many of us have lost the ability to raise our food. Third, the large corporations that control this food industry have, along with other energy and retail corporations, taken over the country. The United States is more of a plutocracy than a democracy. Fourth, this industrial food system, which most Americans take for granted as normal, is a unique, abnormal bonanza made possible by cheap oil. It is not likely to happen again, there is no substitute for the concentrated power in oil. The industrial food system is not sustainable.

We are now moving into the discussion of the second transformation of our food system. The first transformation was made possible by cheap oil and facilitated by policies to promote the industrialization of our food system. The second transformation will occur as we move toward the end of cheap oil. Notice I am not saying the end of oil.

After the rate of oil production peaks and levels off, it will gradually decline. But all over the world, and especially in India and China, demand for oil is increasing. The human population is growing. As demand exceeds supply, prices will rise, and it is the price of oil that will drive us to a different food system. I am suggesting that we should actively affirm this as an agrarian revival, and not just wait in a passive way for it to happen. If we affirm it we can plan for it -- and for the recovery of democracy.

In calling for an agrarian revival I am following writers like Wendell Berry who defined the agrarian as the opposite of, or alternative to, the industrial. The word agrarian refers to a cultural possibility, a possibility that has deep roots as a recessive gene in our cultural organism. Thomas Jefferson promoted this possibility but it was gradually over-shadowed by a culture based on manufacturing. The end of cheap oil will re-open this debate.

What would a post-petroleum agrarian culture be like? First, it would be focused on food. Food prices in the United States already rose by 5% in 2007, the greatest increase since 1990. In other countries rising prices for energy are magnified in rising food process. Climate change may be causing a decline of yields in some areas. And as more corn is used to make ethanol in this country less corn is exported for food, and, as more farmers switch to corn other grains prices rise as they are in short supply. The irony is that as we try to prop up the automobile, the hallmark of industrial transportation, we are burning our food supply.

Rising food prices are already stimulating more people to raise their own or seek local farmer's markets which are popping up in every town. There are now nearly 5,000 farmer's markets in this country, up from around 300 in 1970. during the energy crisis of the 1970s there was a back-to-the-land movement that demographers subsequently recognized as a "migration reversal." A larger percentage of people moved from urban to rural areas than from rural to urban areas.

We can assume this will happen again when it is clear that oil and food prices will continue to rise. Thus another aspect of an agrarian culture is a population that is more dispersed into rural areas with more small towns to serve it. More small towns will be accessible by rail. The cultural values that we cherish in cities can be accessible in smaller cities.

In order to avoid misunderstanding, I want to be clear that those Americans who have enough money, and there are a lot of them, will continue to drive cars and buy food even as the price rises. We are not yet running out of oil, but the vast majority of us will not be able to afford to buy it, or the food that is made with inputs from oil.

Still another aspect of an agrarian culture will be organic methods of food production, working in harmony with nature. This actually began in the 1970s with the first energy crisis, and as the quality of industrial food was called into question, the demand for organic foods has been growing in recent years by 20% per year. I became an organic farmer in 1973 as a back-to-the-land part-time farmer, and by 1991 my involvement in the organic movement led me to organize
Michigan Organic Food and Farm Alliance as a state-wide group promoting local organic food and farming. I did it then as an environmentalist, since organic farming does not use chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Thus it uses 30% less fossil fuel energy. More recently it was found that organic fertilizers actually sequester carbon in the soil and this reduces carbon emissions.

Organic farming methods will definitely be normative in the future even as the energy-intensive Monsantos of this world oppose them and offer their genetic engineering as a solution.

Another aspect of an agrarian food system is the long-overdue shift back from specialized agriculture to a diversified farm structure. When I was growing up farms were still generally small family farms which included livestock as a source of fertilizer. The availability of anhydrous ammonia made livestock unnecessary, and so we now have specialization: large grain farms that are often distant from the CAFOs that produce cheap meat. Thus manure disposal is a problem.

What I am trying to illustrate here is that transition to an energy-conserving and more ecological food system is possible on a technical level, but may be difficult as a political possibility. I mentioned earlier that we are governed by a plutocracy which has virtually replaced our democracy. Money rules. We have seen how industrial civilization facilitated the transfer of wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Already in 2000 the top 1% of Americans had as much disposable income as the bottom 100 million, or 35%. We lost our democracy when we were trained to be good consumers of what the industrial food system produced. And as long as we had energy slaves to provide our food, we did not worry about it. Now we face a new situation as the spike in energy prices creates new threats and opens new political possibilities.

Green politics could have a vital role to play in the recovery of our democracy, but we can expect opposition from big money. Oil companies are making record profits as prices rise; Exxon-Mobile made a profit of 40 billion in 2007. With this fresh infusion of capital the oil companies are likely to move into food and water. And in the more distant future, when labor costs less than oil, we can expect a neo-feudal arrangement where poor people work on the corporate plantation to produce food as a commodity for others to buy. What a sad ending this would be for the Jeffersonian dream of a nation of independent farmers! But it is reasonable to assume that the recent power of labor unions, although currently diminished, will generate resistance to neo-feudalism. It is in this kind of context that an agrarian culture with a decentralized or local food production system can help us. Wendell Berry has emphasized that an agrarian economy is first of all a subsistence economy, and this is what many people will choose -- and are choosing as they spade up their backyards to raise vegetables. It will be a society with a great deal more informal economic activity. Local community currencies will complement the federal money system.

I see evidence that rising costs of oil will contribute to a partial economic collapse in this country. Writers who have studied societal collapse, such as Joseph Tainter and Dmitry Orlov, have emphasized that collapse in a complex society means a shift to a less complex society. I see this as a shift from an industrial to an agrarian society. The good thing about this is that it would very likely get us off the treadmill of economic growth and into a steady-state society.

In the meantime, large food companies will demand more federal subsidies in order to provide us with food as energy costs rise. Efforts will be made to prop up the industrial mode of production until everyone sees it as obviously counter-productive. So one of the first political tasks is to urge the reconsideration of federal subsidies to corporations. The de-industrialization of the food system must eventually be a political program. In Cuba, after the Soviet regime cut off oil supplies, there were serious food shortages. But as they gradually de-industrialized their food system they produced enough food without oil.

The major political task will be to make land available for a new generation of agrarian growers. It is a daunting task at a time when ownership of land has been concentrated in fewer hands including both large family farms and agribusiness corporations. One of the thinkers who has given serious consideration to a program of "re-ruralization" is David Orr. He emphasizes that people should be able to move to the land as "homecomers" rather than as refugees from the city. This requires a well-planned program with an educational component. Orr rejects conventional political agencies such as a Presidential Commission or the land grant universities for this task because they have become the servants of big money. He suggests that planning for re-ruralization should begin with the many regional non-profit organizations that are already working on a transition to a post-petroleum society. Orr argues that this is a long-term project; he suggests ten years of planning. It happened faster in Cuba, but perhaps because Cuba was a more regimented state with a longer growing season. Many religious institutions could be a part of this
process. I would like to hope that the green politics and party would participate in this task. And, along with a new homesteading movement in the countryside, we will need greener cities with more intensive urban food production.

Arable land will be an increasingly precious resource, especially as yields are reduced after the end of cheap fossil fuel inputs. One way to make land available is to require that prime farmland be used for food production. If large land-owners cannot use their holdings as energy prices rise they could be required to sell either to the government, which would redistribute it in smaller tracts, or to smaller growers directly.

There are other ways of envisioning an agrarian culture. Paul Gilk, a long-time Green activist and writer from Wisconsin, has just had a book published entitled Politics is Eutopian. The word "eutopian" is his way of characterizing an agrarian society. Drawing on the critique of industrial civilization by Lewis Mumford as a utopian project, Paul Gilk contrasts utopia, which is noplace, with eutopia, a good place. A utopian society is noplace in that it is not grounded in a natural context but exists as a man-made imposition of abstract and conceptual mental patterns on the natural environment. A utopian society imposes an artificial order with many rules and regulations. It is focused on the control of nature and humans. The norm for eutopia is the village that is rooted in the natural environment, a real place where people raise food with organic methods and live in harmony with nature. While such a life demands more physical exertion, it is likely that better food and more exercise would make us healthier.

One of Paul Gilk's special concerns is the status of women as we move into an agrarian way of life. In past agrarian societies work was often gendered with women bearing the brunt of drudgery. If feminism can remain strong in a post-petroleum society sexist discrimination may be mitigated. More efficient and appropriate technology might also be helpful.

My special concern, as a former professor of religion and environmental studies, is that people's values in a neo-agrarian culture should be informed by an earth-centered spirituality. This may take many different forms, but an example might be neo-paganism with an emphasis on the celebration of seasonal rituals. The word "pagan" means a country-dweller. A greater emphasis on a cyclical structure of time, rather than linear time with its focus on progress, may be conducive to contentment. I wrote about this in my book, Adapting to the End of Oil: Toward an Earth-Centered Spirituality. We have copies available.

In summary, as a Green with a concern for "future focus," I have argued that our society will be moving from an energy-intensive industrial mode of food production to energy-conserving agrarian and local food system. This will be a cultural transition, forced on us by rising prices for energy. We should affirm and support this change even if the price of oil goes down again in order to slow the process of climate change. The costs of energy that drive this change are both monetary and ecological. Agrarian revival may be a radical economic change, but we must reduce the burning of fossil fuels or we face a more radical and more destructive ecological change.

Sources Cited:

Paul Gilk, Green Politics is Eutopian
Dmitry Orlov, Reinventing Collapse
David Orr, Earth in Mind
Dale Allen Pfeiffer, Eating Fossil Fuels
Paul Roberts, The End of Food
Joseph Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies
Norman Wirzba,(ed) The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of
Wendel Berry

You Say You Want a Revolution?

2008-07-20T15:47:00.007-04:00

Detroit, the once-proud capital of industrialization is now the paragon of de-industrialization and urban decay.

General Motors’ July 15 announcement that it will cut white-collar employment costs by 20 percent is just one more nail in the industrial coffin.

Actually, this job-cutting phenomenon isn’t new. It’s been going on since the 1960s when the car companies began automating blue-collar assembly line jobs. Since the 1980s they have been steadily chipping away at the white-collar jobs by offering middle managers early retirement buy-outs.

This is the next American revolution, said Dr. Grace Lee Boggs, 93, a long-time Detroit activist and a Bryn Mawr-educated philosopher.

“We are at a stage in human history that is as monumental as changing from a hunter/gatherer society to an agricultural society and from an agricultural society to and industrial society. Where we’re headed now will be different because we have exhausted planetary space and human space for us to continue to look at things through the Cartesian measurement of material things.

In other words, a new epoch is emerging that emphasizes relationships and communities more than the accumulation of things — and the counting of profits.

A trip to Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, a mere 30 minutes from downtown Detroit, illustrates how the nineteenth century Industrial Revolution grew into the twentieth century consumerist society, which was plush with inventions and conveniences that raised the living standards of middle class Americans. People could afford these products because so many of them left their farms and took higher-paying factory jobs in the cities. However, those good wages came at a price: people became mindless cogs in a giant machine, as Charlie Chaplin depicted in the film, “Modern Times.”

Industrialization was a far cry from the first American Revolution of 1776, which was about people giving of themselves for the larger community, said Grace. That sentiment yielded to a European colonial mentality that justified taking natural resources from Africa, Asia and Latin America in order to manufacture products and sell them at huge profits.

“We need to face the way we used the world for our gains, pleasures, satisfactions,” said Grace. “This is the way we evolve to a higher stage of humanity. And unless we want to live in terror for the rest of our lives, we need to change our view about acquiring things.”

The industrial society also skirted social justice concerns by focusing on jobs and paychecks as a means of keeping the economy going and the people happy. It didn’t face the fact that the workers were demeaned and deskilled or that some of the products they made (like military equipment) or some of the processes they used (which involved dangerous chemicals) could be harmful.

Actually, people have only had “jobs” for the past 100 years. These jobs had nothing to do with being productive, making products essential for living or deriving personal growth or the enjoyment of life. Jobs led people to believe that anything they did for pay was good — no matter how destructive it was to the person, the community or the environment.

Now, in the twenty-first century after hundreds of thousands of jobs have been moved offshore and collapsed many local economies, Grace believes that the way has been cleared for the next American revolution, especially since a number of other factors make the need for change both obvious and necessary:

* Occupation of Iraq;

* Environmental degradation, species extinction and global warming;

* Polarization of the rich and poor in the United States and in the global North and South;

* Economic instability with trillions of dollars of debt, housing foreclosures and the loss of local small businesses and farms.

She said that the turning point occurred in 1999 when protesters’ demonstrations effectively closed the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting held in Seattle. A worldwide movement was kicked off to challenge the rapacious global economy that was shifting the labor market to the lowest bidder in a kind of race to the bottom.

“We usually think of revolution as violence,” said Grace. “However, revolution is more about envisioning what is possible when it appears that things are changing.” She believes that Detroit, in particular, is fertile ground for this next revolution because it is such a devastated city.

Detroit has 70,000 vacant lots where neighborhoods and commercial properties once stood. And although the city looks like it has been bombed, Grace sees a silver lining: the city no longer has to adhere to the usual capitalist mantra of growth and expansion because it is absolutely clear that the industrial system is finished. This fact allows citizens to respond by starting something new all over again.

Grace and her husband, Jimmy Boggs (now deceased), a 30-year Chrysler autoworker, and a host of their friends began articulating the next revolution in the 1980s. Their work eventually planted the seeds for “Detroit Summer” in 1992 where young and old would re-generate their neighborhoods by developing community gardens and producing public works of art.

This effort further blossomed into forming a local agricultural network that is now impacting the city’s food system by growing thousands of pounds of fresh, nutritious produce through organic agriculture techniques, finding alternative uses of blighted spaces, creating income generating activities, and diversifying crops and products for market.

Gardens are also affecting larger issues like reducing crime, cleaning up trash-strewn lots, connecting people to nature, nurturing leadership in citizens young and old and improving property values. What’s more, gardens have rekindled people’s hope in the future, a sentiment missing in Detroit since the “rebellion” of 1967.

This revolution urges citizens not to stand around and wait for leaders to initiate needed changes. Instead, individuals are learning that they can enlist others to help them rebuild their communities. Interestingly, it’s the young who are especially stepping up to this challenge through local service programs, college projects, and the creation of small businesses and organizations.

“What we’re witnessing is a national government that is incapable of solving the questions of our society and our world because politicians are so subject to lobbyists and corporations that fund their campaigns, that they can’t do what needs to be done,” said Grace.

She cited Paul Hawken’s book, “Blessed Unrest,” which discusses how small groups all over the world are rebuilding their communities from the ground up and changing the world because people are connecting to one another.

“We have the opportunity to take a great leap forward in these very challenging times,” said Grace. “We need to change our institutions and ourselves. We need to seize opportunities. We need to launch our imaginations beyond the thinking of the past. We need to discern who we are and expand on our humanness and sacredness. That’s how we change the world, which happens because WE will be the change.”

Gardens Save the Day in “WALL-E” and America’s Cities

2008-07-11T21:31:00.004-04:00

The feature film, “WALL-E,” is a must-see for urban pioneers, environmentalists, teachers and community organizers because it reflects what can happen when citizens take control of their own lives—and plant gardens.

The film opens with a scene of a lifeless earth devastated not by war or natural disaster but by trash. The piles upon piles of trash are so overwhelming that the people have left earth to live deep in space and wait until life on earth returns. The people, who are so overweight they’ve forgotten how to walk, spend their days lying on floating couches and sipping liquid food while robots tend to their every need.

Meanwhile, back on earth a lonely, trash compactor, WALL-E, (the acronym for Waste Allocation Load Lifters, Earth-class) is left to clean up the mess left behind.

WALL-E is a very industrious and curious robot. When he finds an interesting item, he takes it “home” and displays it on his shelf. One day he stumbles on a small plant and puts it in an old work boot.

A spaceship lands on earth and Eve, a probe, scans the terrain. She encounters WALL-E, they fall in love and he shows Eve the plant. She immediately takes it and scurries back to her spaceship. As the ship lifts off, WALL-E attaches himself to it in order to follow Eve.

The spaceship docks on the mother ship and Eve reports to the captain that she has found a plant. The captain realizes that the ship can return to earth but he must fight off Otto (short for auto-pilot), who is programmed to keep things running “normally,” as he has for the past 700 years.

Once they are back on earth, the people begin their new life by planting gardens. Their work together makes them feel good and they work together happily.

One point of the film is that while consumerism on earth made the people wasteful and negligent, the conveniences of technology in space have made them soft, purposeless and dependent. Growing food turns out to be the key to their transformation.

Over the past 20 years gardens have been sprouting in cities all over the United States as people have decided to take control of their lives and their food system. That this phenomenon should happen in Detroit, the twentieth century industrial miracle of the world where the automobile was king, is particularly significant.

Cities were formed 5,000 years ago when humans learned how to grow and store crops. They no longer had to rely on what food they gathered or hunted. Neither did they have to do everything for themselves since they were organized to perform various functions like growing food, protecting the community, praying to the gods for good harvests and making pottery and cisterns for food and water storage. Cities thrived through agriculture and grew into important centers for commerce, government, religion and culture.

The early nineteenth century changed all that when cities became industrial centers. And although industry created more wealth, it lured people away from their farms, polluted the cities and negatively affected people’s health. Factories also separated families and made workers cogs in an economic system whose only purpose was the efficiency and profitability of production.

The availability of cars and cheap fuel in the twentieth century provided people with greater mobility so that by mid-century they began to abandon the cities and pave over their farmlands. Gradually, people became disconnected from nature, the land, their food and each other.

Detroit, which has lost half of its peak population of 1.5 million since 1950, is the symbol of the Rust Belt tragedy where abandoned factories, empty office buildings and gutted neighborhoods dominate the cityscape. However, in 1992 urban gardens began to appear in vacant lots and open spaces as ordinary citizens decided to form communities and friendships through their gardens.

To celebrate this regeneration of the city, every August for the past 10 years, the Detroit Agriculture Network, which coordinates several agricultural and gardening programs throughout the city, hosts an annual bus and bicycle tour to illustrate how neighborhood and backyard gardens are impacting the local food system. For example, gardens are producing thousands of pounds of fresh, nutritious produce for Detroit families through organic agriculture techniques, alternative uses of blighted spaces, creative income-generating activities and crop and product diversity. Gardens are also influencing larger social issues like reducing crime, cleaning up trash-strewn lots, connecting people to nature, nurturing leadership in citizens young and old and improving property values.

The first decade of the twenty-first century is making it evident that the era of cheap fuel is over, which definitively affects our agricultural and transportation systems. Meanwhile, as people yearn to re-connect themselves to nature and vibrant communities, they are turning to gardens as the means.

Detroit, the miracle of the industrial era and the epitome of industrial decline—is now a twenty-first century city on the mend through its urban gardens. And like the film, “WALL-E,” people are committed to re-building their cities block by block by growing food—and hope. And they are enjoying it!

This article appeared in Common Dreams on Saturday, July 12, 2008

Anatomy of a Church Closing

2008-07-07T00:15:00.004-04:00

It’s exciting to build new things like churches and schools. The difficulty comes with having to dismantle them, as many Catholics across the country have had to do.

This summer it happened to St. Conrad’s in Melvindale. Despite all efforts, the 210 families could no longer keep the parish going so on Sunday, June 29, the parish held its last Mass.

St. Conrad’s was one of 16 parishes slated to close in the Archdiocese of Detroit, according to a spring 2006 strategic plan laid out by Cardinal Adam Maida. The plan reduced the total number of parishes in the Archdiocese from 306 to 290. The last plan for parish closures occurred in 1989 when Cardinal Edmund Szoka scheduled 30 parishes for closing.

For the past three years Father Jeffrey Anifer, has been the part-time pastor at St. Conrad’s. He is also the full-time pastor of St. Mary Magdalene of Melvindale, which will now merge with St. Conrad’s. St. Mary’s currently has 700 families.

The final Mass happened to take place on the Feast of St. Peter and Paul so Bishop Frank Reiss and two priests, Father Anifer and Father James Kean, former vicar of the Downriver Vicariate, wore the traditional red vestments.

Everything at the Mass seemed normal except for the presence of a television news camera, a photographer from the local newspaper and the reason the packed church of 500 people had gathered.

Bishop Reiss remained sensitive to the pain felt throughout the room. Instead of making the Mass a Performa ritual, he assured the people that all they had done during the past 42 years in the little, white brick church was not in vain but rather “a foundation of what is yet to come in the great love God has for us.”

Liturgy planners did not spare any effort to make the Mass jubilant. The Gloria, which included an inviting jangling tambourine, led the people and the dozen-person choir to sing with gusto and purpose.

Ironically, the readings spoke about facing realities, handling trials with faith and Jesus’ mission of building the Church “upon the rock” of Peter.

The “Our Father” was particularly powerful in that it felt like the faith-filled prayer of community that it is supposed to be. The people held each other’s hands as usual, but this time it was as if they were holding on to each other for the strength to do what they had to do that day.

After communion, the Eucharistic ministers consumed all the remaining hosts and left the tabernacle doors open, as prescribed by the Church’s “Rite of Leave Taking.” A couple women then stripped off the green altar cloth and the Bishop incensed the altar one last time while the people sang the hymn of thanksgiving, “Now Thank We All Our God.”

There were no announcements after the communion prayer or the final blessing. Instead, Bishop Reiss and Father Anifer presided over parishioners taking “the treasures of the worshipping community” to St. Mary Magdalene where they will be presented at the Unity Mass scheduled for the following week. These treasures included the parish’s baptism, confirmation, marriage and death registers; water from the Baptismal font; the holy oils blessed at the Chrism Mass during the Holy Week; and the Paschal Candle, which was blessed and lit at the Easter Vigil.

During the final hymn, “Glory and Praise to Our God,” parishioners were invited to come up to the altar one by one and kiss it before they left the church. Everyone took this opportunity as their Bishop and pastor shook hands and nodded encouragement to all.

Some of the most poignant moments of the Mass occurred during this time. One old and feeble man determinedly hobbled up the steps of the sanctuary as the bishop and pastor offered their assistance. Another older man, after he left his pew, kneeled on both knees and bowed. Of course, there were many tears as people saw each other, recalled their memories or just thought about not returning to the church.

Two acolytes held processional candles and stood at the doors of the church as the people left. Then the bishop and priests processed out and made sure that everyone exited the church.

“All is done here….In this church you have encountered Jesus Christ in Word, sacrament and one another,” said Bishop Reiss. “This parish is not really closed but rather its ministry will be moved.”

After a short prayer, the Bishop locked the doors of the church and a couple of the women sealed each door with a purple bow made up by a local florist.

At its peak St. Conrad’s had over 400 families, however, the past few years have seen many parishioners leaving the parish for a number of reasons. Some people moved away because of retirement or a new job. Many of the older people who built Detroit’s industrial might died. The renovations of the church that took place during the late 1990s upset many people who left in protest. Two years ago when news broke that the parish would close, people also started drifting away, which not only decreased Sunday collections but increased financial difficulties.

What happened to St. Conrad’s reflects a national trend for many urban and first ring suburban parishes that were formerly home to large baby-boomer families: they have moved to newer suburban areas that form a second and a third ring around the city.

The Archdiocese of New York, which is experiencing the same demographic shifts as Detroit, recommended closing 31 parishes and 14 Catholic schools out of its total of 409 parishes and 287 schools. In 2004 the Archdiocese of Boston previously closed or consolidated more than 80 parishes (New York Times, March 29, 2006). The Diocese of Fargo, N.D., consolidated 33 parishes and the Diocese of Toledo closed 33 of its 157 parishes (America, May 2, 2005).

The most critical element prompting the parish closings is the Church’s declining number of active priests. In 1966 when St. Conrad’s was founded, Detroit had a total of 1,343 diocesan and order priests and in 1968 it reached a peak of 1,373 priests. Meanwhile, the Catholic population of the metropolitan area has remained about the same with 1.5 million in 1966 and 1.6 million in 1968 (the peak) compared to 1.4 million today. It is the priest-parishioner ratio that has changed with 1,124 in 1966 compared to 2,116 in 2006, according to www.catholic-hierarchy.org.

“Father Jeff tried to keep us open but it got beyond what he could do,” said Alex Balderas, one of the original parishioners of St. Conrad’s. Alex helped put in the sod on the front lawn and has through the years worked on various maintenance projects. He also served as a lector and minister of the funeral lunch program.

He was seated alone at a table on the outer edge of the hall, sipping his coffee and looking rather forlorn.

“The Mass was sad but nice,” said Alex. “The previous week was worse. The lector cried through the readings. Then a couple of the women extraordinary ministers cried during communion.”

St. Conrad’s was established after an announcement was made from the pulpit that those families living within a certain geographic area would split off from St. Mary Magdalene, the only Catholic parish in Melvindale at the time, and form a new “mission” church.

“We weren’t too happy about that,” said Alex. However, Alex and most parishioners of St. Conrad’s will undoubtedly return to St. Mary’s. They already have a good relationship with Father Anifer, the pastor there.

“It’s not going to be easy to forget St. Conrad’s,” said Lori Bonfiglio, an extraordinary minister, Parish Council member and volunteer staff member. “There’s too much of me here. I was married here. I buried my husband here. I just have so many friends here. A big church isn’t going to be the same.”

Parishioners by and large appreciated the Mass and they carried it off with a dignity and strength that had shown itself many times before in the life of the parish.

“It was a good and a bad experience,” said Vince Agius who has been an usher, a lector, a member of the Finance Committee for 25 years and chair for the past 15 years. He plans to be a lector at St. Mary’s.

“The worst part is that we’re closing because a lot of the people—many who are from this neighborhood—were here today but haven’t been coming to this church. This has affected me very hard. But it was good to see people and it felt like the good community it was before.”

Vince is convinced that the people of St. Conrad’s will make a difference at St. Mary’s. For one thing, he believes parishioners will ask to involve many more people in the Masses than just the priest, like the liturgical roles of acolytes, master of ceremonies, altar servers and greeters.

Father Robert Blondell was the only former pastor (1973-79) who attended the Mass. St. Conrad’s was his first parish as pastor and he celebrated his 25^th anniversary as a priest there. He instituted several new liturgical and Christian service programs that the people have continued long after his move to another parish.

“He was a blessing,” said Juanita Luzod, who became active in the parish in 1974 because Father Blondell had reached out to her and “fixed my problem.”

Juanita, who has served as an extraordinary minister, a member of the choir and Parish Council and a Sunday collection teller, regards St. Conrad’s as her “second family” and she said she would miss its camaraderie. Asked if she will participate at St. Mary’s, Juanita replied that she is “getting old” but if they ask her, she’ll probably offer her services.

Alice Zombo, also one of the original parishioners at St. Conrad’s, has spent her time decorating the parish for special occasions, singing in the choir and working with the St. Vincent de Paul Society. Her children made their first communion, confirmation, and were married at the parish and she believes that she has been closer to the Lord than she has ever been.

“Whenever there are problems, I come here and they go away,” she said. “It was a pleasure to be in this church.”

The staff and parishioners had been working for weeks to clean out the parish of all its belongings. Some of the men expressed concern that vandals would descend upon the church once it was empty so by Tuesday all religious items, paperwork and things of value were sent to St. Mary’s. The Archdiocese owns the building but plans of what it will do with it have yet to be determined.

After the Mass parishioners met for their usual coffee, donuts and fruit refreshments but they stayed together for over 90 minutes as they reminisced, scanned scrapbooks and looked at old photographs. Meanwhile, the adjacent, darkened church lay in state like a carcass taking its last breaths as sunbeams from the skylight streamed over the altar.

The Food Connection to Urban Revitalization

2008-04-02T14:41:00.002-04:00

Gradually, the mainstream media is recognizing the relationship between what we eat and how we live in our urban environments.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman declared in his Fourth of July commentary that obesity is becoming a red/white/blue issue when it should be seen as a national health problem. The corporate food industry wants Americans to believe that "food liberty" or the freedom to eat whatever we want, is a patriotic right. Krugman claims that the nation has been getting fatter since 1980 (curiously, a time when urban sprawl began to kick in to high gear) and that the real “question is whether big companies will have a free hand in their efforts to get children into the habit of eating food that's bad for them.”

What does obesity have to do with urban revitalization? Well, if we had more walkable cities and spent less time in our cars, we would probably be healthier. A report by the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the national average for commuting to work in our cars was 24.3 minutes in 2003. The top two commuting times were New York City at 38.3-minutes and Chicago at 33.2-minutes.

Check out these statistics compiled by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). From 1999-2002, 65% of U.S. adults over 20 years old were overweight and 31% were obese. 16% of children and adolescents are overweight, a rate that has tripled since 1980. In 2001 the Worldwatch Institute said that we were seeing the highest rate of obesity ever recorded in human history.

And the causes of obesity?

We are eating more calories due to larger portion sizes as well as an increased variety and availability of food.
We are spending more time in our automobiles and less time walking or biking
We prefer convenience foods to cooking our own and we especially choose those that we can eat while we drive.

Further studies show that from 1972 to 1997 the number of fast food restaurants has doubled and the number of restaurants rose by 35%. The National Restaurant Association reported that between 1977 to 1995 there was a 200% increase in the percentage of meals eaten at fast food restaurants.

Meanwhile, the Transportation Research Board and the Institute of Medicine is finding a “growing body of evidence that shows an association between the built environment and physical activity levels” at home, work, school, etc. Although the study admits that modifications to the built environment alone are unlikely to solve the problem of Americans' declining physical activity, such changes have the potential of influencing “positive social effects on neighborhood safety, sense of community, and quality of life”

The Task Force for Community Preventive Services, an independent, non-federal body appointed by the CDC director, has recommended specific changes in the urban landscape that can encourage physical activity and reduce auto-dependent lifestyles:

Street-scale urban design that increases street lighting, traffic calming, and enhances the aesthetics of a small geographic area
Community-scale urban design that provides transit-oriented development and increases density and mixed use housing;
Transportation policies and practices that create bike lanes, require sidewalks, subsidize transit passes, provide incentives to car or van pool, increase the cost of parking, and add bicycle racks on buses.

It is refreshing indeed to see people from different fields promoting lifestyles that can help revitalize our American cities. Now we need to “just do it.”

Navigating Many Worlds

2008-02-01T13:55:00.000-05:00

I live next to a wooded area. My cat enjoys going out there as often as possible and in the summer, I hardly see him at all. A small stretch of manicured grass separates the woods from my house and acts like a boundary between the wild and civilization.

While he’s on that grass my cat frequently takes a breath as if to prepare himself for a different world from my house, which will require different behaviors for survival. I imagine that he makes the same transition after he leaves the woods to come back home.

Last weekend I made a spiritual retreat at my old convent and became painfully aware of how much things had changed since I had left there 23 years ago. And just like my cat who crosses from one world into another, I, too, found myself crossing into many different worlds.

The physical structures at the convent had undergone considerable renovation to accommodate the sisters’ new needs. Only the stairwells were recognizable as many of the walls had been moved or changed in some way.

The sisters themselves were changing. Some had aged, adjusted to physical ailments, been stricken with memory loss or had to accept changing times. Many of their friends had died. Many people were occupying the building as guests of the community’s various spiritual outreach programs. The sisters had recently merged with five other communities because their small sizes had forced them to join together in order to survive.

The serenity of my guest room differed from the serenity of the chapel. Hallway conversations with former sister-friends were not as profound as those that took place at the dining room table. Conversations differed between those nuns I had lived or worked with than with those I knew from more casual acquaintances.

For example, Sister Agnes, 93, mistook me for someone else and talked on and on about old times that I wasn’t a part of but which were obviously very precious to her.

I had dinner with Sister Irene, who was president of the community when I was in it, and with Sister Mary, one of the College librarians who had served there for over 50 years. We talked about the politics of the day, something we had never discussed before and yet I knew I could count on the wisdom of their views for they had always been intelligent and insightful women.

My visit with Sister Margaret revealed things about her life and ministry that I didn’t know about even though we had lived together for two years. She talked in the same, spirited way that was familiar to me. How little we know of each other even when we think we know each other!

At Mass I sat next to Sister Helen who had served as a missionary in Peru for 25 years. When we exchanged the sign of peace, I broke out into a “La paz, hermana.” It signified a bond that I felt with her since I, too, had learned Spanish, visited Peru and knew about the impoverishment of the people there.

Even though I had planned to make this weekend spiritual, I had decided to leave the quiet convent to attend a noisy county Saturday night Democratic fundraiser. Congressman John Conyers was the evening’s keynote speaker and I specifically went to the event because I wanted to appeal to him for the impeachment of Vice President Cheney. (I was extending my retreat to activist justice.)

The congressman graciously accepted my suggestion but, as he said in his speech to the entire group, he was going to concentrate on cleaning up the Justice Department. My disappointment was somewhat allayed by the fact that at least I had tried to do something about the reign of terror going on in Washington. Lately, I find that doing something is a lot better than doing nothing.

The fundraiser was a jovial, festive occasion with a fine feast and good wine to drink. I saw many people I knew from eight years before when I was an active member. Like the convent dining room, I had deeper connections to some people than to others but with every encounter, I found it necessary to re-establish the relationship of the past.

While in line at the cash bar, I encountered George, a large donor, who I had once solicited money for the party. “Did I give any?” he asked. “Yes,” I answered, “a substantial amount.” But our conversation was brief. I didn’t know him. Actually, I think it was his wife who gave me the money.

Although most of the people there that night had known me as the party’s county chair, I had a new identity now. One old friend encouraged me to run for office. At one time I would have welcomed such an invitation but I had to tell her that as a writer and a professor I had stepped into another world. Politics was no longer the place where I wanted to express myself.

We all are part of many worlds in a day, in a week, in a month, in a year. The more worlds we encounter, the more flexible we must be.

People who stick with the familiar or who keep themselves to a minimum of worlds, limit themselves from the chaos and confusion of these many worlds.

Bumping against different worlds is invigorating for some people and threatening to others, however, the times we live in demand that we operate in many different worlds, including those we wish we could avoid.

Those who work to limit their worlds are really doing a disservice to themselves, their children and their community. They are making themselves fearful of others. Even 90-year-old nuns confined to the convent, anxiously await talking with strangers who visit because they feel enriched and because they are still curious about meeting different people.

Our lives today bid us to encounter many different worlds. Let us accept these many worlds, celebrate them, and discover how they can enrich our lives and our communities. If we don’t, we will condemn ourselves to live in a world of fear, derision and ignorance.

Post-It Notes

2008-01-15T22:02:00.002-05:00

One of the devout Christian women of our town recently wrote a letter to the editor about her horror over the news that three children killed three other children. Such tragedies are abhorrent, puzzling and extremely sad. Her solution to stopping the killing was to post the Ten Commandments in the schools. This may be a good idea to solve some other problems we face in our society. After all, what’s good for school children should be good for the adults, too.

So let’s start by emblazoning the Ten Commandments prominently in the Oval Office. The president’s order to invade Iraq has resulted in the killing (sixth commandment) of nearly 3900 Americans and one million Iraqis (according the extended estimates of the 2006 Lancet report) and the displacement of 4 million more—2 million in-country and 2 million out-country, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Andrew Harper (tenth commandment). This war was begun for our country’s easy access to oil (eighth and tenth commandments).

We should certainly be glad that the stain of adultery (seventh commandment) has pretty much been wiped clean from the White House. To most Americans, this commandment is the most important of all, so we can rest easy on that one while Bush is in office. However, bearing false witness (ninth commandment) remains a problem because it gets coupled with denial when reality doesn’t fit the ideology, as in the case of the National Intelligence Estimate, which reported that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

And yes, it also might help if the president occasionally made a show of keeping the Sabbath (fourth commandment) by going to church every once in a while, as Amy Sullivan pointed out in her 2004 New Republic article. Gosh, even that adulterer Clinton went to church!

However, as bad as Bush is, he isn’t alone in this faith quagmire. Members of Congress who gave the president the power to wage war on Iraq need copies of the Ten Commandments for their wallets (right next to their campaign fund checks). They are just as culpable as Bush for the killing of Americans and Iraqis (sixth commandment) by approving the president’s every request to finance this war.

Currently, this war has cost taxpayers over $462 billion, according to the National Priorities Project, with another $196 billion currently on the table for consideration. At this rate the cost of the war may go as high as one trillion by January 20, 2009. God knows what the next president will do. Given that the frontrunners on both sides are hawkish wanna-bees, we may see even more of our tax dollars committed to death and destruction!

Not to be left behind, our illustrious private contractors who graciously provide over 100,000 mercenary troops in Iraq should each receive a copy of the Ten Commandments with “Thou shalt not kill” (sixth commandment) underlined and in bold. These people kill for the money (second commandment), not for democracy and freedom, not even for oil.

Corporations bilk taxpayers out of billions of dollars (eighth commandment) for things like subsidies, no-bid contracts, war-making profiteering and tax breaks—all money that could be spent on Americans at home for incidentals like education, health care, social security, the environment, home heating, housing, aid to the poor, infrastructure, police protection and disaster relief, to name a few. The big corps should hang the Ten Commandments around their necks as well as in their boardrooms.

Perhaps the ones who need the Ten Commandments most are those preachers who put the almighty dollar ahead of everything else (first commandment). They use their pulpits to convince their flock that they speak for God when they are really promoting a particular ideological agenda (third commandment). As they amass great numbers of followers and line their pockets with hefty offerings, tithes as well as the sale of books, videos, and other indulgences, these fast-talkers forget that God admits to being a jealous God (second commandment). That means that sure as shootin’ God will reign down terror on those who would compete with Him as Numero Uno faster than you can say “Islamo-fascism.”

The Bible (New Testament) also says that God is a god of justice and mercy who cares for the least of His Kingdom. That means that prosperity gospels really don’t cut it (Matthew 5). Radio and TV vitriol contradicts Jesus’ word on love and self-sacrifice. Worrying about the future (like determining who goes to heaven) or trying to create the future (like speeding up Armageddon) remains out of the bounds for humans (Matthew 6:25-34). GOD is the Ultimate Decider about such issues because well, God is God and that’s God’s realm (first commandment).

The Ten Commandments comprise some very simple easy-to-follow rules and like the good Christian woman says, children need to be reminded of these rules by seeing them posted on school walls. But we shouldn’t stop there.

Post the Ten Commandments in our city halls, our state and federal government buildings our public libraries. Post them in offices, corporate boardrooms, factories (what’s left of them), shopping malls, restaurants, gas stations, sports stadiums and casinos. Put them up in every public bathroom stall where ordinary people—and even U.S. senators—can’t miss them. Maybe then we can be that Shining City on a Hill that we claim to be.

This article appeared in the Kalamazoo Gazette on Tuesday, January 8, 2008.

Imagine It in Toronto

2008-01-03T23:15:00.000-05:00

How typical is it to go north for a winter vacation unless you are a skier or snowmobiler? Not very typical. Nevertheless, my husband and I “did” Toronto for the holidays and were quite surprised by the quality of life in this metropolitan area of 4.4 million people.

As we walked the neighborhoods and streets, tried out ethnic restaurants and talked to local residents at an evening pot luck, we discovered a whole new world free of distractions from the usual sightseeing repertoire and instead learned something about life in this popular Canadian city that is very appealing.

The most significant impression I had of Toronto is that its people are so civilized.

Imagine that people in the fifth most populated city in North America actually praise themselves for their tolerance of ethnic and racial differences, which are evident everywhere you go.

Imagine a place where over 100 languages are spoken and neighborhood utility poles don signs advertising language classes in the expected Spanish and the unexpected Persian, Urdu and Turkish. Street posters also declare that “literacy is a right.”

Tolerance for differences is exhibited in other ways. In the St. Lawrence Market you see Asian women making French crepes. Stores and shops are largely staffed by young immigrants. The bank ATMs include directions in Chinese characters. We ate a lovely Thai meal to the tunes of the Supremes’ hit “Baby Love” and the “Dirty Dancing’” theme song, “Time of My Life.”

While it’s not unusual to hear other languages spoken in a major urban area, it is a delight as well as a shock to walk clean and litter-free streets.

Imagine seeing a man on a subway escalator accidentally drop a small wad of paper from his pocket and then pick it up.

Incidentally, trash baskets are separated into litter, recycled newspapers, and recycled bottles and cans. And when the trash overflows, you see empty coffee cups neatly placed on the top of the container.

Recycling bins are everywhere, even next to people’s front porches should their home not have a backyard.

Environmental and public health concerns abound in Toronto. Imagine a small fish market with a sign that not only recognizes an endangered species (i.e., Chilean sea bass) but warns customers that it will not sell that fish.

Imagine holiday TV commercials with information about the World Wildlife Fund, improving your water IQ, joining Alcoholics Anonymous, or considering police your best friends on New Year’s Eve night.

Smoking is not allowed in public buildings or even in restaurants and bars. So those who do smoke are doing it as they walk or as they stand outside a building. I saw one woman in the celebrated Annex Neighborhood where we stayed sitting on her front porch at 10 p.m. without fear of thieves, murderers or terrorists! Instead, she watched other people walking down the street at night as she took her cigarette.

Actually, she wasn’t the only one out at night as it appears to be a Toronto custom to sit on the patio during the winter (at home and at some pubs and grills) sipping drinks and talking to friends. Even the residents of a neighborhood senior citizens complex did it. (And that building was smack in the middle of the neighborhood, not separated from the rest of the city.)

Imagine that 40 percent of the downtown population walks to work or that a clean, safe, and efficient streetcar, bus, and subway system moves 1.4 million passengers each work day. (Curious that there were not many obese people walking the streets either!)

Imagine a night-time window shopping excursion where people crowd the well-lit holiday-clad streets inspecting beautiful outdoor displays of fruits and vegetables, CDs, DVDs, clothes and housewares. Restaurants are jammed with people and storefronts advertise yoga classes, palm reading, massage work and herbal medicine consulting.

Although I am describing Chinatown on Spadina Street, there are plenty of people out at night on the quirky Yonge Street strip, the Bloor Street upper-end commercial district and the eclectic Queen Street West area. Recognize that street life is free entertainment as well as an experience of vibrant urban life.

And imagine all this activity going on and it being relatively quiet. No boom boxes. No high fidelity-sound cars. No wild teenagers hanging out of cars jeering at passers-by. Just people walking outside being a part of the scene, even if they are alone.

Imagine living in a city where there were only 84 homicides in 2007.

Although I am admittedly starry-eyed about Toronto, we met some residents who pointed out the city’s downsides: the metro system breaks down all too frequently (it happened one time to us); the cost of living is high; the streets are a little dirtier than they should be.

The downtown grates host several street people but you know, EVERY resident, even the homeless, has access to health care.

The people of Toronto have obviously invested in their city, especially in their neighborhoods, and they are willing to pay the price for the services. For example, some neighborhoods ensure their safety through the protection of private police but the sidewalks and streets of every neighborhood were all shoveled from snow to accommodate walking and bicycling.

Old houses are beautifully decorated and well-maintained, an indicator of the citizens’ respect and appreciation for the past. Downtown buildings sport this same sentiment as the old Victorian brick edifices sit comfortably next to modern office and condo skyscrapers.

OK, so the Torontoans didn’t formulate an urban revitalization plan and the Gardiner Freeway that hugs the lakeshore is an obvious eyesore on stilts. At least developers and city officials didn’t wipe the past right off the map as Americans did when we replaced our cities with freeways and glass and steel buildings.

As far as I’m concerned, Toronto serves as both a model and an inspiration for cities because it illustrates that what it takes to “make a village” is for the people who live there to summon the political will to determine what urban life can and should be.

It would be an easy decision to go to Toronto to live (barring tough immigration restrictions) or even to move to the many wonderful American cities that offer their residents a good life. However, don’t we owe it to ourselves and our families to invest in our own communities where we are and to make them good places to live?

Let’s get to it!

This article appeard on Common Dreams.org on Friday, January 4, 2008.

Restaurant Review: Grande Mere Inn – Stevensville

2007-12-23T22:55:00.001-05:00

Imagine walking into a popular tourist area restaurant at 7 p.m. on a Saturday night and getting a table?

That’s what we did at the Grande Mere on our way home from a day trip in southwestern Michigan one fine, fall day.

After being told we’d have an hour wait, Matthew, the maitre d’ noticed us studying the menu and overheard us mention to the hostess that my husband’s parents had recommended this place. Suddenly, a table appeared for us in the middle of this rustic and jolly country inn within sight of Stevensville’s Lake Michigan shoreline – and its fantastic sunset.

“Try the lake perch or the ribs,” Matthew told us, leaning over as if sharing a secret. And although we considered it, I ordered the top sirloin since I’d had fish twice that week. My husband chose the walleye, his favorite fish.

Jessie, our able server, soon arrived with appetizers of garlic toasts, a half loaf of bread, beef liver pate, and herb butter, all prepared at the Mere.

We later found out that the Mere remains a favorite for people from Michigan, Illinois and Indiana on vacation in this lakeshore tourist area. Many stop here as it is one of their favorite haunts on the Lake Michigan lakeshore road between St. Joseph and New Buffalo.

“One of the secrets to my success that I fell into,” said Pete Racine, “is to locate a restaurant within 15 minutes of a time zone.” People generally eat at their regular times, which means that patrons from Illinois and Indiana, who are on central time, come to the restaurant an hour after the Michiganders do. From 4:30 p.m. until the close, the tables turn over three, sometimes four times.

Although you don’t feel rushed, the wait staff of 13-14 can serve up to 40 to 50 guests efficiently, attentively and unobtrusively. Matthew or one of the Racines regularly pour water, bring in a tray of food or help you cut open your Alaskan king crab shells. At sunset, Lorraine Racine opens the blinds in the dining room’s row of large windows in time for a glorious Lake Michigan sunset.

Although my 8-ounce steak was tasty and juicy, I wish I had ordered the walleye. This lightly-crusted pan-fried fish was so flavorful that it didn’t require the accompanying homemade tartar sauce. On the other hand, if you like tartar sauce, you’ll find it doesn’t overwhelm the fish. The baked Idaho potato came out exactly as I like it: a crusty skin and hot buttery interior.

Actually, seafood is one of the Grande Mere’s specialties—and that includes cold water African lobster tail, crab legs, shrimp and sea scallops.

“Most restaurants leave out lobster because it’s too expensive,” said owner Pete Racine, originally from Chicago and 13-year veteran of Win Schuler’s Restaurant in Marshall.

Racine bought the building, which formerly housed the Woodshed Rock & Roll Country Bar. The bar had served tourists until it burned down in the late 1970s. After they repaired it and expanded the building they turned it into a gourmet restaurant.

The cozy Cranberry Bog Bar occupies the original building and the tables in the dining room come from the Woodshed.

The name Grand Mere comes from the state park located minutes away from the restaurant.

“People enjoy lobster. What do I care if the price doesn’t fall into the 3-to-1 rule-of-thumb markup?”

Clearly the Racines have unlocked the secrets of a 23-year-old success that advertises only by word of mouth: give the customers what they want.

“If people don’t mind paying the market price, why should I deprive them of lobster?” asked Racine in an interview following our meal.

People may order for a meal or carryout, one to two pounds of crab legs ($30-44), four to eight-ounce lobster tails ($18-42), or various surf and turf combinations with shrimp ($19-24), crab legs ($36-42) and lobster ($28-42). If customers prefer a lighter menu, they can get a plate of fried scallops, shrimp or clams, lake perch, blackened swordfish, or chicken filet tenders. As with the full meals, all plates include two choices: house salad, cole slaw, potato or blended rice.

Desserts are all homemade. We tried the chocolate mousse with Grand Marnier. Its thick and chocolately flavor had a delicious bite to it, although it was not heavy. Southwest Michigan is blueberry country and the Mere takes full advantage of this local crop with fresh blueberries in Racine sauce, blueberry pie with a cream cheese filling.

The darkly-lit Cranberry Bog Bar provides a cozy place for a meal with the dinner menu or lighter fare. Decorated with school pennants on the walls and a rustic brick floor, the wooden booths and tables, with green and white-checkered tablecloths, come with comfortable padded chairs but the atmosphere is no less lively than the dining room. The knotty pine and bead board walls of the Mere give it that “Up North” feeling. Wait staff, many of whom have been with the Mere for several years, are often assisted by Matthew (who’s been there for 22 years) or one of the Racines—or even a guest who feels no compunction about passing a tray. After all, this is a country roadside inn.

The wine list includes a variety of reds and whites with sparkling wines and champagnes. The Mare also offers several domestic, imported, and microbrewery beers and ales.

August and December (when families and companies hold their Christmas parties) remain the Mere’s busiest months so Racine recommends reservations.

Grande Mere Inn

5800 Red Arrow Highway (exit 22, off I-94)

Stevensville, Michigan

(269) 429-3591

What Makes a Great Neighborhood?

2007-08-22T13:24:00.001-04:00

It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes the vision and determination of its residents to make that village. Residents in Kalamazoo's neighborhoods are working hard to make life safe, enjoyable and beautiful for all -- and they are doing it through their own initiative, as Jay Walljasper suggests in his book, "The Great Neighborhood Book."

For example, Eastside neighborhood residents recently discouraged youth from loitering and selling drugs on an East Main Street corner by letting it be known that they were taking back their neighborhood. They did this by regularly patrolling the corner, picking up trash, and persuading business owners not to allow kids to loiter because it would hurt their businesses.

If residents knew the youth or their parents, they talked to them. If residents didn't know the youth, they got to know them, asked them about their interests, and found out why they were loitering.

"The residents felt pride in their accomplishment," said Pat Taylor, executive director of the Eastside Neighborhood Association. "But they did not delude themselves into thinking that the job was done." The experience did give them confidence to solve other problems in the neighborhood, like giving teenagers something to do through the Summer Employment Program.

Sixteen teenagers, ages 14-18, spend 20 hours per week Monday through Thursday to help distribute food every Tuesday morning for the Fresh Food Initiative. They also do yard work for senior citizens. On Fridays, they go to Youth Opportunities Unlimited for job skills training. YOU is sponsored by the Kalamazoo Regional Educational Service Agency.

"It gets kids more connected with the neighborhood and shows them that they can make a positive difference," says Taylor.

Action in Edison

After 30 years of living with adult bookstores in the center of their business district, residents from the Edison neighborhood finally drove out these businesses and are now replacing them with family-friendly stores. This victory helped residents feel empowered to make more improvements.

That opportunity came this year when Edison residents mounted a move to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from dumping polychlorinated biphenyls into a landfill in the neighborhood. They organized college students, politicians and other citizens outside the neighborhood to support their effort.

"Residents really came out in large numbers to prevent that from happening," said Tammy Barnard, executive director of the Edison Neighborhood Association. "They were happy and excited about making their case, but they are still working with the EPA to find a positive solution."

College students are a major part of the population in Kalamazoo, and they live among permanent residents in neighborhoods like West Main Hill. However, sometimes the students' noise and traffic goes a little overboard, and residents must take action. Every fall, in collaboration with the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety, the neighborhood association welcomes the students back with packets of information about the city, the neighborhood and expectations for their behavior.
"Working with the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety has helped us reduce noise and traffic in West Main Hill Neighborhood," said Mike VanVaerenbergh, past president of the association and a board member for 10 years. "We can prove that because the city did a traffic engineering study and showed that noise and amount of traffic has been reduced in recent years."

Recently, residents launched a beautification project in the West Main business district, which includes a monthly weeding and trash pick-up detail. They started this project a couple of years ago when the Michigan Department of Transportation wanted to repave West Main and put in an attractive brick retaining wall. MDOT consulted residents.

"You don't always get that kind of cooperation from MDOT," said VanVaerenbergh.

What is placemaking?

According to Walljasper, a successful neighborhood has to have places and activities to draw residents together so that they can know each other and care about each other and their neighborhood. That's what makes one place different from other places.

The Edison neighborhood does this well by hosting a number of public gathering places that serve not only its residents but people from all over the city, including the Washington Square Library, the Bank Street Farmers Market, and the playground and Kik Pool Family Aquatic Center in Upjohn Park. African-American and Hispanic stores and restaurants also dot the area.

A mixed-income housing development is being built near the Bank Street Farmers Market in what used to be a vacant field. Such developments are key to strengthening a neighborhood, said Andres Duany, a Miami architect and founder of the New Urbanism, a nationwide movement that has affected Kalamazoo over the past 10 years. New Urbanism seeks to rebuild cities to be the vibrant places they once were.

But a mix of incomes isn't all that distinguishes Edison. The neighborhood also has the largest and most ethnically and racially diverse population in the city, with 30 percent Hispanic, 20 percent African American and 50 percent white.

"The best part of the neighborhood is the diversity," said Barnard. "We are all mixed together. I love being among different cultures. This is a cool place to live."

Recently, Edison's diversity was featured in a film about the residents of the Washington Square Senior Apartments made by local filmmakers Dhera Strauss, of Kalamazoo College, and Amy Levine, of the Education for the Arts Technology Learning Lab.

What distinguishes the West Main Hill neighborhood is that it is the oldest continuous association in the city and one of the few in the state that falls in two jurisdictions: the city and Kalamazoo Township. It has the lowest crime rate in the city, and it can boast that its monthly board meetings take place in a castle -- the Henderson Castle, that is.
Because of its proximity, the West Main Hill neighborhood works to maintain a good relationship with Kalamazoo College. Communications director Jim VanSweden regularly attends board meetings, and the neighborhood's annual May meeting is held in the Olmsted Room at the college.

On the first Tuesday of August for the past 30 years, 800 neighborhood volunteers help at the USTA Junior Boys Tennis Tournament that takes place at K-College. This event also includes a picnic for the residents, VanVaerenbergh said.

Other neighborhood activities include a spring Easter egg hunt for children in Jones Park. In June, neighbors coordinate an ice cream social as well as an Art in the Park celebration of kids' art projects.

Overcoming problems

For all the success the neighborhoods have seen, getting more people involved remains the most difficult problem for neighborhood directors and board members.
"People have a lot of responsibilities," says Edison's Barnard. "Because most parents work, they feel obligated to spend time with their children (in their leisure time). They are less likely to volunteer for neighborhood activities."

Despite the good turnouts in West Main Hill's activities, VanVaerenbergh said the same people do the organizing. The association would like to see new leadership emerge.

Another problem of neighborhood associations is convincing residents that their efforts can make a difference. This is especially critical when it comes to fighting crime.

"Residents want to see immediate change, but instead see a lack of follow-through on the part of the city and the politicians," said Eastside's Taylor. "Our citizens are not familiar with the politics of the community, and they are not experienced with how things get resolved."

Many people also tend to rely on the city or Public Safety to solve their neighborhood problems instead of taking on some of the responsibility themselves. So neighborhood associations and the Department of Public Safety have worked hard to cooperate.

The Community Public Safety Unit, also known as the liaison officers program, was initiated in the 1990s and has been a big help, neighborhood leaders agree.

Fourteen officers cover the city's 16 neighborhoods to "preserve the peace, deter crime, reduce citizen fear and provide for a safe environment," according to the CPSU Web site. The officers do this by working directly with citizens in a problem-solving manner through prevention, education and cooperative activities, like the upcoming Neighborhood Night Out picnic in early August.

Making neighborhoods great takes a tremendous effort by many people, both inside and outside of government.

This article appeared in the City Life section of the Kalamazoo Gazette on July 30, 2007.

The Great Neighborhood Book -- Book Review

2007-08-16T15:20:00.005-04:00

If you ever doubted that one person can make a difference in his or her community, then read this book. It is filled with examples of ordinary citizens who decided to make one small change in their neighborhood and inspired others to join them in making their block a lively and enriching place.

Whether it's planting petunias, putting a bench in front of your house, attracting businesses, or curbing teenage vandalism, efforts like these can get the ball rolling for people to come together, get to know each other, work together to solve a problem and take pride in the neighborhood.

The disastrous urban renewal policies of the 1960s literally tore down our cities and encouraged people to abandon them for sparkling new suburbs.

However, over the past couple of decades, people have been returning to the old cities to revitalize them. Many people who never left are also been rebuilding their neighborhoods with a new and enthusiastic fervor.

Author Jay Walljasper offers some success stories of these endeavors. His easy-to-read style is complemented by a comprehensive approach to what it takes to make a neighborhood great, including fostering a sense of community, creating places for people to hang out, taming traffic, fighting crime, boosting economic vitality, and developing pride in your place. He also provides books and Web sites for further study.

One of Walljasper's main contentions is that "citizens are the best authorities on what works and what doesn't work in their own communities." In this way, people can actually take control of and make constructive changes in their neighborhood without having to wait for government to do it for them. This is done by simply observing what's going on in the neighborhood and what is needed. Once people begin to make improvements, others are likely to join in and work together for a common purpose.

Walljasper suggests that the city divide itself up into more manageable units called "villages." These villages are small enough so that people can feel connected to each other because they see each other. This is done by providing walkable areas for shopping, education, leisure, and entertainment as well as by constructing attractive public gathering places. Such activities help people feel they belong to their neighborhood.

Walljasper is a man on a mission. He wants to help people create the kinds of cities they can all care about and care for. As a senior fellow of the Project for Public Spaces, he focuses on "placemaking," or those specific actions taken by citizens that make a place thrive. Placemaking promotes sociability among neighbors, it offers residents of all ages with lots of things to do, and it creates a place accessible to all.

This book review appeared in the Kalamazoo Gazette's City Life edition on July 30, 2007.

The Great Neighborhood Book -- Book Review

2007-08-16T15:20:00.004-04:00

This book review appeared in the Kalamazoo Gazette's City Life edition on July 30, 2007.

Cleansing the Hate and Invective in Kalamazoo

2007-08-06T07:52:00.000-04:00

The all-night rain did not escape the notice of those who convened a cleansing ceremony on Sunday, nearly 24 hours after the conclusion of a white supremacist rally held in the Department of Public Safety parking lot on Saturday.

“God did the initial cleansing,” said joe schmitt, a newly ordained deacon of the Kalamazoo Catholic Diocese and acting chairman of the Kalamazoo Inter-faith Coalition, the group that organized the ceremony.

About 30 people from various local religious and peace organizations gathered at 2 p.m. in the same parking lot where a busload of 40 white supremacists arrived the day before to hold a rally. The bus was part of the security arrangement made by local police.

Radio talk show host Hal Turner of North Bergen, N.J. promoted and hosted the rally. He indicated that he chose Kalamazoo because of alleged reports of black violence against whites. He was accompanied by Bill White of Roanoke, Va., commander of the American National Socialist Workers Party, a group that claims to fight for “white socialism and the white working class,” according to its Web site.

About 350 people attended the rally even though city officials, ministers, local peace groups, and the Kalamazoo County Democratic Party suggested that residents ignore and avoid it. More than 400 local, county and state police were on hand to maintain order and incidents were minimal.

The cleansing ceremony began with the burning of the sage in a hand-sized shell. Keith Clapp, an honorary member of the White Mountain Apache tribe, Don Denemy and two other men scooped the sage smoke out of the shell with a hawk or eagle feather and “spread” it around the participants’ bodies as they stood in a circle with their brooms and buckets at their sides.

“We are trying to sweep away the negative energy,” said a mother to her young daughter who asked what the men were doing.

The men then walked to the 25x25-yard fenced-in area where the white supremacist supporters had stood and continued to scoop out the smoking sage. The participants immediately began the symbolic scrubbing of the pavement.

Three drummers beat their tom-toms, another Native American practice that signifies the heart beat of the earth.

“It took time to find the beat,” said Karen Chadwick, one of three drummers. However, it didn’t take long before they became synchronized. Chadwick said she attended the ceremony because her father is an extreme racist.

“Even as a little girl I knew that he couldn’t be right,” she said. “All my life I wanted to make a point of the KKK and like-minded [white supremacist] folks that this is not good thinking.”

Long-time peace activist Amy Anderson said she was glad people were interested in coming to the ceremony.

“Every little thing we can do to draw people together is worthwhile,” she said.

Bob Weir, Michigan’s 6^th district leader for the campaign to establish a Department of Peace, said the short ceremony was a good opportunity to bring good peace energy here as well as to be a presence for peace.

“The main tenet of the Department of Peace is to establish peace through understanding,” said Weir. “The tools are dialogue and discussion. Therefore, the philosophy is the antithesis of what I believe happened here yesterday.”

Kalamazoo City Commissioners David Anderson and Barbara Miller participated in the ceremony as well. Anderson said he attended because he deliberately chose not to be there on Saturday afternoon.

“But I did not want to look the other way,” he said. “I needed to face [what happened in Kalamazoo], so I came back here today.”

Anderson said that he also came for Commissioner Bobby Hopewell, an African American, who “courageously” sat in the control center of the building watching and listening to the rally.

“He had to sit there and listen to the hurtful things people were saying. There’s no way to atone for that,” said Anderson.

When the white supremacist rally was announced, the Inter-faith Coalition was at first hesitant to act.

“It needed to be done,” said schmitt, who also noticed that the energy of the parking lot had changed considerably as a result of the group’s cleansing. “You can feel it in the air.”

Clapp also noted the effect of Saturday's rally on the place.

“When the shell (that holds the smoking sage) gets especially hot, it means there is a lot of evil present and it is trying to make the man drop the shell and stop the cleansing,” said Clapp. “We noticed that our shells were so hot they were hard to hold on to.”

Rev. Donald DeYoung of the Reformed Church of America emphasized the need for Kalamazooans to stay vigilant against racism

“We have outsiders coming in to spread hate,” he reflected. “But we have to be aware of the hate coming out from the insiders.” DeYoung was referring to Kalamazoo’s recent troubles with gangs, racial profiling and relationships between African Americans and the police.

“This is now a place of public safety for all of us” said schmitt.

What's Wrong with Local Talent?

2007-07-26T22:31:00.000-04:00

Kalamazoo County Deputy Administrator Peter Battani was unanimously selected by the Board of Commissioners to assume to post of County Administrator this week. He replaces Don Gilmer who has held the post for the past four years and will leave it in January. Battani was the only candidate interviewed and although there was some dissension in the community about the process of not conducting a national search, Battani's service record and vision won over the board.

Many members of the county administration and the community supported Battani's bid for the administrator spot including some elected Republicans. Battani served as chair of the Kalamazoo County Democratic Party 1997-99, but has remained more politically neutral since he assumed his position with the county. Current administrator Don Gilmer is a Republican and he had previously served in the state legislature for 22 years. The two provided a balance of talent and political background.

Conducting a national search for positions in government, academe, and business has been de rigeur for at least the past 30 years. People in the institutions think they are getting the best in the country to take on positions. However, this process takes time and money. Some commissioners were concerned about the money part, especially since the county had seriously miscalculated the funds it would take for staff retirements earlier this year. Some leaders who spoke in favor of Battani were concerned about the time element, which might take two to three years for a new person to be recruited, selected and acclimated to the job and the area. Northside Neighborhood leader Mattie Jordan took on a more practical view:

"With all of the people leaving Michigan, why would we turn away from someone who is already here to take the top county spot--and look elsewhere for someone we don't already know?"

Good point, Mattie. What are we doing when we search everywhere but within the organization for our leadership? What incentive do employees have to stick with our institutions if they can't move up? How can we cultivate leadership when we discourage it?

Peter Battani is a proven local talent, capable, and competent. He can hit the ground running because he knows the job, he knows the people, he knows the politics of Kalamazoo County.

Battani's vision is to bring together the 22 units of government in our county to share services and costs, which is an ambitious task but a very necessary one. It is also a hot button issue because too many people in township government fear they may lose their jobs. In fact, the state, with its $1.5 billion deficit is looking at this very prospect. It would overturn township government, which was formed through the 1787 Northwest Ordinance. Many leaders in Kalamazoo want to consolidate services and form partnerships among these units of government so that a new form of regional government can take place. However, this has been tried--and failed--several times over the past 30 years. Battani has the best shot at doing something about this very difficult issue.

We have much work to do in our county and in Michigan, so let's get busy and do it!

And Peter, congratulations!

The Walking City

2007-07-17T22:29:00.000-04:00

We all know that walking is good for us, but do we recognize that a walking city is a sign of a healthy city?

In almost every instance our cities are designed to accommodate the size and speed of our cars. We reserve huge land masses for parking; wide streets with right and left turn lanes to ease traffic flow; large signs and billboards to see advertisements at speeds of at least 30 miles per hour; rounded corners for quick turns; and wide spaces around buildings for spectacular views of our architecture. Even the garages of our homes have become the most prominent fixture while the front door has become smaller and more hidden.

Cars have given us much in the way of comfort, convenience, and speed over larger expanses of land, however, we have inadvertently forgotten that walking was the primary way human beings moved from place to place until only about 100 years ago. Rebecca Solnit wrote a history of walking entitled Wanderlust to help readers remember that our bodies are made for locomotion at about three miles per hour. At this pace we have an opportunity to let our thoughts meander in the same way we traverse our path and we are able to be more reflective. We also notice things not just through our eyes, as we do when we drive, but through all our senses. Thus, we become more sensitized and more connected to the people and things around us.

Walking is a public activity that fosters civility and manners among the people living in a city. When we encounter others on the street, we say hello or, if we must share a narrow walkway, we say excuse me. In either case, we are acknowledging the presence of another person as we share our common public space. Cars force us to focus more on our private and individual selves. As we zoom through our city streets in our glass and steel cubicles with the radio or CD on, we know that we don’t have to acknowledge anyone else.

Dutch psychologist Bernd Jager addresses our public activity by noticing that cars have had an effect on the type of face we present to others on the street. Observe yourself or others in the car. Typically, our faces are vacant and glazed, especially as we wait out a traffic jam. Then contrast these driver faces with people at a farm market, a festival or a crowded city street full of people milling. It is the excitement of this “throng” that is interesting, fun, and keeps us alive—even when we are in an anonymous crowd.

The way we use space communicates what we value in our culture. Anthropologist Edward T, Hall says that cars take up too many spaces where people might meet. In Los Angeles, for example, it is estimated that 60-70 percent of the space is devoted to cars (through streets, freeways, parking). As these “glass cocoons” confuse our sense of movement through space to a blur, we tend to be more competitive and aggressive to vie for position or get through that yellow light. People tend to thrive in cities that have a healthy density with lots of informal—not planned—opportunities for interaction and involvement in safe, interesting and attractive public places like parks, public squares and sidewalks. Europe does this well in cities like Paris, London, Rome and Florence while New York, Boston and San Francisco are wonderful examples of vibrant walking cities in America.

Of course, walking enhances our physical health. Research shows that walkers have less incidence of cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and glaucoma. Walking is good for weight loss and the prevention of colds and recently researchers discovered that walking downhill can help lower blood sugar levels and LDL cholesterol.

As we revitalize our cities, we are finding out more and more something we took for granted prior to the 1960s: that the design of our cities influences our behavior. When issues like parking, widening streets and freeways, clearing land for a new development come up in your local council meetings, consider how much land we use to accommodate the car. Then contrast that to the benefits a walking city can have on our physical, mental, spiritual and our public health.

If New York Can Do It, So Can Kalamazoo!

2007-07-12T01:18:00.000-04:00

The Gazette recently ran a story about New York’s attempt to quiet the noise in the city. How amazing it is that this town of 8 million people thinks it can tone it down. Shouldn’t we in Kalamazoo with our 77,000-person population be able to do something about our noise, too?

Noise is a nuisance and it degrades our quality of life. I used to live in the Stuart Historical Neighborhood. The residents were considerate, took good care of their property, and watched out for crime. Even the college students who lived there were cooperative. However, it wasn’t always easy to find a level of quietude in my own home without being bombarded by the noise of loud car stereos, giant lawnmowers and leaf blowers, big-engine trucks and buses, buzzing hospital helicopters, or the hum of air conditioners.

Noise is not only annoying, it is depressing because there is no escaping it. In fact, noise is such a problem that the U.S. Census Bureau has listed it as the number one problem in America’s neighborhoods—above crime, bad odors, and other bothersome conditions. While it is unrealistic to hope for perfect silence—Nature itself is full of sound—unnecessary noise impedes human interaction and has been known to escalate to anger, violence, even murder and suicide.

Noise is a matter of decibels (dBA), the measurement of sound. The lower the decibel level, the less sound. The higher the level, the more sound. When sound becomes an irritation, it is called noise. Different people have different tolerances to sound, but the cumulative effect of exposure to noise can result in sleeplessness, hearing loss, headaches, nausea, high blood pressure, and heart attacks. Children exposed to too much noise don’t do as well in school because their language and speech as well as their cognitive, social and emotional development may be adversely affected, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (October 1997 policy statement, RE9728).

Reducing the invasion of noise into our homes and neighborhoods is difficult to fight because our lifestyles rely so much on machines and many of these machines register decibels much higher than 70 dBA, as prescribed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. To get an idea of how noisy it is out there, compare normal conversation, which is 55-65 dBA, to common noisemakers like car stereos (100-110 dBA), leaf blowers (95-105 dBA), lawn mowers (88-94 dBA), construction tools (100-130 dBA), motorcycles (100 dBA), city traffic (85 dBA). Add exposure to the indoor noise made by vacuum cleaners (84-89 dBA), food processors (93-100 dBA), hair dryers (80-95 dBA), and some children’s toys (135-150 dBA) and you are inundated with noise without much relief.

While most noise is a by-product of machines, we must also contend with noise that is intentional. Boom cars that roam our streets with loud, bass stereos are a common example. The drivers delight in turning up the volumes of their stereos to anger others, especially women and the elderly. (This “benefit” is advertised in product literature! See a collection of this literature at www.noisefree.org/boomcars/boomcarads2.php.) Worse yet, too many city ordinances are largely ineffective against boom cars because the police must catch the offenders in the act.

Reducing noise in our communities is also difficult because we don’t relish confronting the noisemakers: we fear the bad feelings with them or the risk of retaliation. To some extent, we also compromise ourselves to the noise because we believe that quiet is neither a natural part of life nor do we realize that we have a right to quiet. However, once we become aware of the risks involved with our noisy environments, maybe we can demand a change just as we have done with other quality of life issues like eliminating smoking from public places, using seat belts in cars, recycling, cleaning the air and water, prosecuting drunk drivers—and most recently, banning the dumping of PCBs in Kalamazoo. It is important to realize that with all of these positive developments, local citizens joined together to make change.

Imagine for a moment what life would be like if the noise in our community were consciously and conscientiously reduced. Fireworks would occur only on the Fourth of July. Car owners would contain their music. Lawn enthusiasts would use brooms and rakes instead of leaf blowers. WMU football would get rid of its canon that announces home team touchdowns. Truck and bus manufacturers would design quieter engines. The sound coming from air handlers on top of commercial buildings would be significantly abated because engineers planned for the comfort of the people outside the building as well as inside.

Initiatives against noise in our community would bring some positive benefits to all of us. Most obviously, we could preserve our hearing. We could also attract more people to our quiet city. We could value the public spaces we share. We could calm ourselves down, be less tense, more gentle, and more meditative.

Let’s work toward quieter communities where unnecessary sound is recognized as noise—and then minimized. Our quality of life—especially our health—is at stake.

For more information about local community efforts to reduce noise, check the Madison, Wisconsin-based organization, Noise Free America at www.noisefree.org.

This article appeared as a viewpoint in the Kalamazoo Gazette on Wednesday, August 1, 2007.

The Power of the Center

2007-07-05T15:26:00.000-04:00

Imagine yourself in the center of a giant circle. You experience the spaciousness of its area yet the familiarity of its borders. You radiate outward from the center and simultaneously feel inwardly focused. This is the dynamic power of the circle and like circles, so it is with great cities and towns. However, over the past 50 years we have inadvertently been losing the power of the center.

No one knows exactly when cities came to be but kings and conquerors established them as a central place from which to oversee their lands and people. These centers offered people protection from their enemies, access to goods, and association with other people.

As a new invention some 6,000 years ago, cities were marked by their buildings (houses, storage areas, governing structures, places for religious worship) and gathering places (marketplace, meeting areas), which the hunter/gatherer or agricultural societies did not need. Cities developed a distinctive culture and gave people a sense of identity and pride (i.e., Paul of Tarsus, Helen of Troy). As large numbers of people occupied a city, legal systems were set up to control them. Writing was invented to keep track of property ownership and food distribution. Work became specialized as farmers provided food, artisans crafted goods, and administrators coordinated the city’s functions. Thus, people learned to depend on each other for their daily needs. Social hierarchies also emerged from this division of labor and from a diversification of people who converged on the city either through choice or enslavement.

Today, many of our American cities are marked by a flight from the center. Farmlands that once defined the city’s edges are disappearing as we move to the country because we perceive the city as an unsafe, unsavory, undesirable place to be. We connect ourselves through complex transportation and communication systems without having to traverse geography. Public spaces like the city center or the market square are less important to us than the private spaces of our subdivisions, cars, malls, and big box stores. We further separate ourselves from one other because we prefer to move about in our cars rather than to ride public transportation or walk. We feel more comfortable clustering among people with similar social and economic backgrounds to ourselves. Cost, not beauty, dictates the look of our buildings and chain stores maintain the same, recognizable look of their buildings regardless of location. Consequently, we don’t always experience the pride of belonging to a particular city when they all look alike.

Over the past 20 years a movement is afoot in our country to revitalize the city and reestablish it as the center of our community. Brave “urban pioneers” have taken back the slums by restoring dilapidated old houses and buildings to their past splendor. They are creating neighborhoods people want to live in—and that includes families with children! Farm markets with local products as well as public concerts and outdoor gatherings in downtown city squares are popping up everywhere. People are demanding bike routes, walkways, and public transportation (buses, light rail streetcars, subways, and trains) not only for their recreational needs, but as an alternative to their cars.

In short, people are returning to the city as they seek to create sustainable communities that are enjoyable, functional, and beautiful. They are also finding the city to be a powerful centering element for their physical, mental, and social health.

This article appeared in the winter issue of Natural Balance magazine.